An experiment

Bear with me for a moment, folks: I've grown bored with myself.

Bored with my writing, which has grown ever more academic and dense. Bored with my thinking, which feels hopelessly unremarkable. Bored with my scholarship, even as it is becoming more relevant and interesting. Boo-frickin'-hoo, right? But here's the thing: nothing worth reading has ever, I assume, come from a bore: "that which is written without labor is read without pleasure," as Johnson wrote, and labor may be a lot of things, but it is never boring.

So this morning I had a thought. I scribbled a couple lines of verse

September's final kiss--
light frost at morning's light,
the delicious scent of autumn's breath
brings promise and renewal.

(go easy on me . . . it was just a few lines of scribbled verse while I was waiting for my coffee to brew. Anyway . . . )

Autumn, for me, is the very essence of beauty and renewal, and here we are on the cusp of October. In honor of October, then, and in an attempt to shake this ridiculous self-indulgent boredom, I have decided to carry out a little experiment: once a day, for the next 31 days, I will post something that has struck me as beautiful, beauty being as good a criteria as any, I suppose.

In doing so, I want to remind myself to "look up and out"--up beyond my immediate frame of reference, out beyond the end of my own nose. In posting every day, I hope to establish a bit of a rhythm, a bit of discipline in my non-academic writing, a scheduled 'break' from the academese that will, in turn, improve my other writing efforts. I also hope that, maybe, those of you who read my musings here will enjoy the fruits of my little experiment . . . and by the end I might have created an interesting little October essay. So, I guess we'll see.

Another "Must Read"

In honor of its release, the Chronicle of Higher Education today profiled Kevin Roose's book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.

Having not yet read the book, I can only comment on what is in the Chronicle article; still, in the small sampling offered here, I admire Roose's treatment of Liberty (and its constituents) as a cultural study--this is precisely what makes me so excited about our system of higher education in the U.S.: lacking a federal curriculum and constitutional mandate for higher ed, but held accountable by the regional accreditation bodies, we have a wonderfully diverse system of HE that allows for discrete institutional cultures to thrive. There's real value in that.

The U.S. system of higher education certainly faces numerous, significant challenges, but it is encouraging to focus, from time to time, on its unique strengths. Discrete institutional climates and cultures that draw and serve unique populations are, to my mind, one of the greatest strengths of our system.

The hope, of course, is that through the accreditation process, students in all these discrete educational enclaves have something of a shared mission-- a common, grounding principle--that values such cultural diversity and promotes temperance, critical reflection, and respect such that they acquire a foundation for negotiation and deliberation . . . the rhetorical core of our democracy. It is here that the relationship between higher ed and a thriving, stable democracy is revealed most clearly . . .

ah, but I have now digressed into the realm of my dissertation. More on that to come, folks.

Athletics and Higher Education

A while ago, while enrolled in an upper-level (i.e. 900-level) economics in higher education course, one of my peers offered the following during discussion:

Can we all just stop pretending that athletics has anything at all to do with education?

While the majority of those in class nodded in approval, a few of us—maybe about a quarter of the class—looked as though we had been collectively slapped. I suspect the number of us who were taken aback by her sardonic remark was falsely inflated: many of those enrolled in the course worked in the Athletics Department and/or were working on an advanced degree in Athletic Administration.

Her comments, and the positive, vigorous nodding enacted by most in the class, is not at all uncommon in academe. Not long ago, over lunch, I sidestepped an argument with a friend’s husband about the benefits of strong athletics programs to the wider institution. I have fielded criticism by some colleagues and advisers for permitting my students to write about sports and sports-related topics. I have seen the polite response by some in my field who clearly question the relevance of my interest in language and culture related to athletics (You wrote a paper about trash-talking? Oh, that’s . . . unique), the subtext of which is, “It may be interesting, but it’s idiosyncratic and not publishable.” And I have read and heard countless comments like the one following an article in today’s Chronicle discussing Texas’ proposed 10% Admission plan and its implications for the Texas football programs:

“Forget the impact on academics. I guess if you want to influence Texans you need to go after athletics. Nice…” (B. Smythe).

I have also been following this critique of values as played out in the media in recent weeks vis-à-vis the revelation that USC’s football coach Pete Carroll’s salary is four times that of USC’s president, Steven Sample. This particular case, echoing the tone of B.Smythe’s comment, is held up as the emblem of our culture’s skewed priorities. While there may be some truth in such a critique—$4.4 million is an astounding yearly salary—Carroll’s deal is, in fact, a compensation package. “USC Football” is a powerful brand, and Carroll is the guardian of the brand. To that end, Carroll’s salary is much less ridiculous, to my mind, than the exorbitant compensation offered Hollywood actors and actresses.

It seems to me that the bad vibes we scholars generate related to our athletic programs does a disservice to the complexity of the institution and of higher education as a multifaceted project. Too many of us in academe disparage athletics; we set up unhelpful dichotomies between athletics and education that are unhelpful at best—and are, at worst, damaging. It is understandable: it is difficult, especially in the humanities, to see ‘fat cat’ pockets of our campus thrive while we, in preparation for teaching our classes, jog room-to-room looking for chalk.

Still, I am cautious, even critical, of privileging curriculum as the only significant heuristic in Higher Education. With everything we understand about multiple intelligence, liberal education and its beneficial externalities, and the importance of cocurricular participation in learning, I am hesitant to turn away from the value of athletics, and I will defend athletics as steadfastly as I do the arts. As noted in the Chronicle’s coverage of the Texas admissions case

This year 81 percent of the freshmen at the flagship campus here are “top-10-percenters,” and next year the proportion is expected to rise to 86 percent. That trend, Austin officials say, gives them practically no flexibility to admit musicians, scientists, and athletes who don’t make it into the top tier for automatic admission.

The fact is that strong athletics programs are an instrumental part of institutional viability. At my behemoth BigTen institution, for example, I know that of all our athletics programs, only one turns a profit (football); one breaks even (men’s basketball), and—because as a non-profit enterprise all proceeds must be reinvested in our institutional programs—all other athletic programs, including those required and protected by Title IX, are funded by the capital generated through concessions, television deals, Bowl appearances, licensing, and the like. Athletics, in this way, is a self-sustaining industry within the broader context of the academy. Situated thus, athletics provides opportunities for student access and name recognition that transcends esoteric academic communities (i.e. “the ivory tower”); in short, strong athletics programs blur the boundaries between the academy and the non-academic community and open the academy to a much broader constituency.

At smaller, non-profit institutions, the benefits of strong athletics programs and the closely-coupled relationship between athletics and academics are more conspicuous. Adrian College in Michigan, for example, expanded their athletics programs in the face of markedly declining enrollments. In just a short amount of time, their risk paid off: as reported in the 19 September 2008 Chronicle

The additional revenue from higher enrollment has enabled Adrian to make significant improvements in academic buildings and in faculty hiring. As its operating budget has grown to $43-million from $23-million since 2005, the college has modernized two academic buildings, expanded the campus dining hall, and hired 16 tenure-track faculty members.

There is so much more to say, of course, but I am probably already pushing the boundaries of this medium with such a long post. So I'll close with this: as an advocate for athletics in higher ed, I am also cognizant of the fact that balance here is key. Still, my fellow doctoral student’s remark resonates with me, and I would argue that athletics—for the role it plays--is as important to higher education as the academic programs, people, and facilities that define it.

I'll show you mine . . .

So here it is: the 'project' I mentioned in my last post. Here's what to do: share yours (here or on your own blog . . . but don't forget to link). It would be fascinating, I think, to build a matrix of writerly advice (a la Richard Hugo's 'Nuts and Bolts') with each component revealing its author's unique ethos. C'mon--you know you want to . . .

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A Completely Idiosyncratic, Slightly Off-Beat, Not Necessarily Original but Potentially Helpful Collection of Writing Advice

~or~

A Few Tips about Writing I’ve Picked up along the Way

Everyone in a complex system has a slightly different interpretation. The more interpretations we gather, the easier it becomes to gain a sense of the whole.
~Margaret J. Wheatley

To my mind, there is no system more complex—or more beautiful, intriguing, and beguiling—than our system(s) of language. Through the years, I have gathered a few little gems that I have taken to heart, made my own. What follows (in no particular order) is not formal advice; it is, perhaps, a revealing portrait of my own mind—but these scraps of writing wisdom, quilted together, inform my own writing practice, so I thought I’d share them with you. The point, of course, is not to ask you to adopt my criteria, but to inspire you to gather your own.

1. The better you understand the rules, the more liberated you are from them. This is a variant of the “you gotta know a rule before you can break it” philosophy, and there is something to it—making the conscientious decision to break/disregard a writing rule or to utilize a particular figure ‘reads’ very differently than haplessly stumbling onto something. Learn the conventions. Write with purpose. Break the rules with purpose. Make writing decisions, and be able to back them up. Doing so will give you confidence and will give your writing presence.

1 ½ . And yet . . . welcome, embrace those ‘happy accidents.’
Maybe it is your subconscious at work or maybe it is just serendipity, but every so often, despite one’s best intentions, a word comes out not as we intended . . . but so much better. Rule 1 ¾: Read your work aloud: sometimes what you say differs from what you wrote . . . and it is much, much stronger. A simple detail can change the efficacy of entire piece of writing.

2. Heed this gruesome advice: murder your darlings.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch penned this little gem in 1914, and it has since been picked up by Faulkner (as “kill your darlings”), Mark Twain (allegedly), and countless creative writing instructors. Writing is sometimes about tough decisions; ‘cutting the fat,’ or culling your hard work may be the toughest of them all, but it is often the right thing to do. The moment we become enamored of our own brilliance, we have lost our objective edge. Take one for the team, and all that . . . very noble, very valuable.

3. Eschew Obfuscation.
Huh? Exactly. This is an oldie but a goodie from the classic Elements of Style by Strunk and White (originally published in 1919):

Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. [. . .] In this, as in so many matters pertaining to style, one’s ear must be one’s guide: gut is a lustier noun than intestine, but the two words are not interchangeable, because gut is often inappropriate, being too coarse for the context. Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason (76-77).

4. To know and know well: the nature of the sentence and the power of strong verbs.
To my mind, sentences and verbs are the DNA of writing—stunning in their simplicity, awe-inspiring in their logical complexity and potential. If one can master not only the grammatical types of sentences (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) but also stylistic forms or modes (i.e. the periodic and the final free modifier) AND if one can come to understand the inherent power of verbs and their role in the internal logic of the sentence, then one can create life . . . on the page.

5. Appreciate the marriage of sound and sense.
There is a reason Plato banned the poets from his utopia: language is inherently musical and music is mesmerizing, persuasive. Pay attention to how language works, what it does, how it sounds—not just what it means. As the poet Edward Hirsh observed in How to Read a Poem an Fall in Love with Poetry, “writing fixes the evanescence of sound”— what an extraordinary phenomenon. Never underestimate the power of the auditory imagination.

6. Grammar is a part of language . . . and it can be fun (like a puzzle).
Consider Joan Didion’s argument for grammar: “All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.” Details make all the difference (i.e. ‘the devil is in the details’), and grammar represents one of the most nuanced, most influential, subclasses of ‘details.’ When it works, it supports and defines your writing; when it is flawed, it is distracting, like white noise or static.

7. Read!
From Richard Hugo: “a writer learns from reading possibilities of technique, ways of execution, phrasing, rhythm, tonality, pace” (The Triggering Town, xi). Read what you like, what you admire. Read the work you wish you had written. Don’t imitate, per se, but come to understand the nuances, the culture, of your favorite (or most serviceable) form or genre.

8. Don’t be lazy.
Rhetorical questions try to be provocative without taking the time to craft an appeal . . . lazy. As Hugo notes, “If you can answer the question, to ask it is a waste of time.” Other ways to be lazy: relying on clichés, drawing on ‘canned’ arguments, using gratuitous slang. The choices you make affect your ethos—choose wisely.

9. Always consider ethics.
Language can be incredibly powerful, and there is an inherent trust between writer and reader that must be honored. To paraphrase Andrea Lunsford, language use must be principled, accurate, and fair.

10. Learning opportunities present themselves in unexpected places and ways.
I learned much of what I know about rhetoric I learned from poetry. Much of what I know about poetry I learned from . . . sports. My writing education is informed by what I learned in chemistry and pre-med (consider the beauty and extraordinary grace of molecular geometry). With that in mind . . . a few favorite, random (but nonetheless valuable) quotations (some about writing, some not) that guide my writing:

An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.
~F.Scott Fitzgerald

Make your own kind of music.
Sing your own special song.
Make your own kind of music—
Even if nobody else sings along.
~ ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot, 1969

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector.
~Earnest Hemingway, The Paris Review

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER—itty bitty living space.
~Robin Williams
as ‘Genie’ in Walt Disney’s Aladdin

To write [. . .] you must have a streak of arrogance—not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice.
~Richard Hugo

The language is perpetually in flux: it is a living stream, shifting, changing, receiving new strength from a thousand tributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time.
~Strunk and White

You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.
~Robert Frost

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
~E.L. Doctorow

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightening and the lightening bug.
~Mark Twain

Verse forms do not define poetic forms: they simply express it. It is an important distinction. For many people what is off-putting about poetic form is the belief, sometimes based on an unlucky class or exam, that these are cold and arbitrary rules, imposed to close out readers rather than include them. [. . .] poetic form is not abstract, but human. [. . . ] This is the charm and power of poetic form. It is not imposed; it is rooted.
~Mark Strand, The Making of a Poem

The poet may legitimately step out into the universal only by first going through the narrow door of the particular.
~Cleanth Brooks, Irony as a Principle of Structure

And now for a bonus rule, one that is perhaps my favorite . . .

Embrace your own weirdness.
I believe this, too, comes from Hugo, but I first learned it at the feet of my first true mentor, the poet and professor Dr. Jonathan Johnson. What does it mean? Well, my friends, that's the point: that's for you to decide, as only you can.

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Okay, so that's my list of 'rules.' Ante up, folks!

Stray Thoughts: A Long Winter's Nap . . .

Okay, not so very long, but I haven't been blogging much. Of course, I haven't been napping much either; my writing energy has simply been more focused on teaching, dissertating, preparing for upcoming conferences and workshops, and--as a poet-in-semi-stasis who averages about a poem a year these days--working on my latest sestina (God, I love that form).

(okay, okay . . . and following football and hockey--what can I say?)

Of course, that all sounds more interesting than it actually is--which is to say, I'm really in something of a boring moment. Not professionally: the dissertation work is fascinating and frustrating; as I said to one of my diss directors (MBD)the other day, it is frustrating to work so hard to produce so little, so slowly (those of you who are working or have worked on a dissertation or dissertation-like project, I'd love to hear from ya' on this if you know what I'm talking about; though MBD gave me good, encouraging advice, it can't hurt to solicit more--you know, to gather a strong sample).

I have to add that the group of students I have this semester are perhaps the most interesting, smart, engaging, enjoyable collection of folks I have worked with as writing/rhetoric instructor: I'll be sad to see them go, this 'dream' class, and it has been fun preparing, designing, and reading the work associated with the class.

I suppose, with new projects on the horizon and a new poem to capture my imagination, I just don't have a whole lot else to say. It's an odd feeling, this 'having nothing to say.' I guess I just have to accept that, for the moment at least, I'm just kinda boring. Been there? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

That said, I compiled a list of my favorite writing perspectives and advice for my final 'lecture/discussion' of the semester, and I was pleased with what came of it. So I'm going to post it (separately) and invite all who care to participate to offer up their own.

Cheers! zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Tyranny of the Urgent

I mentioned in class the other day that Eliot gives us, April is the cruelest month and Shakespeare's warns, beware the ides of March, but neither April nor March have anything on October in academe.

Maybe that overstates the case, but what a busy time of year! Good busy. Crazy busy. Dynamic, engaging, exhausting. Surprising. One expects the rush toward the start of the semester, and the storm of grading and student panic and project deadlines near the end of the semester, but the October surge sweeps one up in a vortex of falling leaves and student essays . . . of dissertation work and student advising, grant applications and the job market season opener, letters of recommendation for former students applying to grad school, planning, conferences, proposals, sustaining the day-to-day classroom vigor, reading and responding to papers, the course blog . . .

October is the veritable 13.1 mile mark in the innovation marathon.

Add to that travel (and the unexpected, untimely death of our alternator while driving through Gary, Indiana), a wedding, two toddlers at Halloween, and

THE ELECTION (echos)

---whew, baby-baby.

Still---and just maybe this is a divine madness---I wouldn't want it any other way. I've only just begun to realize that a central tenet of my life's philosophy is


From chaos, order. This has always been the case; this is, for better or worse, my way. So as the semester pushes on, as I continue to gather more momentum than moss and feel that I am, like Yeats' falcon, turning and turning in the widening gyre---as the election nears with all of its chaotic, piercing, frenzied energy, and I am reminded again of Yeats' lines

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

---I know that what feels like the Tyranny of the Urgent is really no more than the view from the eye of the storm, a prerequisite for progress, the chaos that precedes order.

And rather than be tyrannized, I choose to conquer.

Shameless Plug

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am having my Intermediate Composition students keep team blogs to allow them the opportunity to write for a 'public audience.' This is the first time I've incorporated blogs into my pedagogy, and I am learning a lot. For starters, while ostensibly written for a public audience outside of the teacher/learner dynamic, the blogs have been, for the most part, written for me, the instructor. This may owe to the quality of the prompts I've offered, which have been predominately academic and have emerged from classroom lectures/discussions centered on rhetorical theory. So we'll see where the next unit takes us. Still, I am encouraged by the investment these students have shown in engaging the project.

With all this in mind, I would like to invite anyone who reads my musings here to visit our class blogs. I have established a 'hub' where I post class notes, prompts, et al. materials appropriate for an open-access forum, but more importantly, the 'hub' allows access to the student blogs via the blogroll. I hope you will consider checking us out, and please feel free to engage these blogs as you would any other; after all, the course is called

Engaging the Polis:
Rhetoric and Forms of Public Argument

Care to join us?

'What Makes People Vote Republican?'

I found the following, excerpted from Jonathan Haidt's most recent piece for Edge, intriguing:

Our national motto is e pluribus unum ("from many, one"). Whenever Democrats support policies that weaken the integrity and identity of the collective (such as multiculturalism, bilingualism, and immigration), they show that they care more about pluribus than unum.

Of course, there is much more to his piece than this singular observation; his treatment of political ideology and moral psychology is particularly cogent. Agree with his conclusions and treatment of the problem or no, he offers valuable insight that is, at the very least, worthy of consideration.

To my mind, Haidt's work compliments Richard Weaver's observation in Ethics of Rhetoric (1962) that in discursive practice conservatives tend to argue from definition and liberals tend to argue from circumstance, providing yet another locus for understanding the dynamic between language, thought, and action.

If you are at all interested in rhetoric, politics, and ideology, you should check it out.

My Scholarship

I just 'wordled' some of my work, related to my dissertation, and this is what I came up with:

>

Image courtesy of wordle.net

Yup, that pretty much covers it. Cool.

Crawling out of my hidey-hole . . .

well, maybe not quite yet, but between processing our garden produce (which is quite bountiful) and preparing for the Fall semester (which, perhaps somewhat ironically, I have been reading up on the pedagogical benefits and drawbacks of using blogs in the teaching of writing while surreptitiously neglecting my own blog), designing an intermediate composition course that both engages public affairs but does not, in any way, compromise academic and intellectual freedom nor displaces writing as the primary focus of the course, digging in to more dissertation work before the Fall, and preparing for my oldest, dearest friend's bridal shower and October wedding, I have woefully neglected my blog.

Not that I am complaining: to the contrary, this time of year is invigorating and exciting . . .

But back to my purpose, here (besides disrupting the illusion that I have abandoned my blog): any of you folks have experience using blogs in your teaching? Thoughts about it? Visceral reactions? I'd love to hear from ya'.

Tagged by the literati lizard. . .

My pal Bradley recently memed a little meme of literary classics, and I agreed to follow suit. So here goes:

Q1. What is the best classic you were “forced” to read in school (and why)?

Hmm . . . [scanning bookshelf]. This kind of question is precisely what makes canon discussions so darn difficult, no? Okay, so . . .

Today, at this moment, I’m thinking my choice must be Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (though some may foolishly contest its canonical status). Here’s why:

Though separated by both time and war, Ellison’s novel seems to me the logical conclusion of two truly remarkable American moments, the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance, in style, tone, and subject: for me, it’s like the literary grandchild of Dorothy Parker and Langston Hughes. Still almost painfully relevant, Invisible Man is uniquely, cogently, an American novel, one that speaks across multiple cultural moments---its narrator’s, its author’s, and this, our contemporary moment. Consider Ellison’s lines: “Step outside the narrow borders of what men call reality and you step into chaos [. . .] or imagination” (576) and “Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat” (577). The book is worth reading for these passages alone.

In fact, it has been a decade since I last read it; I do believe it is time to have another look.

Q2: What was the worst classic you were forced to endure (and why)?

Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair. Oh, Dear God, Vanity Fair. Never has any author even come close to rivaling Thackeray’s contemptible, damnable characters. I hated them all. I hate him for writing them into existence. I realize that it is intentionally a “Novel without a Hero.” I don’t care. Vanitas Vanitatum be damned. I hate this novel. If I have to say much more, I will just start swearing uncontrollably.

Q3: Which classic should every student be required to read (and why)?

Though not fiction (and for some reason I just assumed we were talking fiction here), I’m going to jump genre and recommend that every student should be required to read and thoughtfully consider Aristotle’s On Rhetoric and Poetics (and since there is a quality compilation edition available, I’m counting these treatises as one). There is so much of value for anyone interested in language, discourse, civic participation, et al.

(and . . . can you require someone to ‘thoughtfully consider’ a work? Neat.)

If I must decide on a distinctly literary piece, however, then I’ll go with poetry here and select Dante’s The Inferno (the rest of the Divine Comedy should be recommended, but not required, reading).

Q4: Which classic should be put to rest immediately (and why)?

This is a tough one because even though there are a few classics I despise (Canterbury Tales, Vanity Fair, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The House of Mirth, The Old Man and the Sea), I suppose I can see their literary value and purpose. But to put to rest a classic . . .

Well . . . it’s a major stretch, but I’ll go with the entire Star Trek corpus (including the franchise). Maybe only a cult classic, the novels were inspired by a bad ‘60s television show!? C’mon now. So I’ll go with a loose interpretation of ‘classic’ and ax Star Trek, effective immediately.

I’m also a little over the Kerouac hype, but I don’t know if I’d put On the Road to rest, per se---especially since I kinda dig it.

Q5: **Bonus** Why do you think certain books become classics?

Here I’ll adopt Kerr’s definition of curriculum and apply it to the classics: “nothing less than the statement a college [perhaps in this case, a culture] makes about what, out of the totality of man’s [sic] constantly growing knowledge and experience, is considered useful, appropriate, or relevant to the lives of educated men and women at a certain point of time.”

That, coupled with longevity--or perhaps the honoring of or curiousity about what has been “useful, appropriate, or relevant” to previous generations ---is, to my mind, what makes a classic.

I would also argue that craft has something to do with it, though that may be a troubled and tenuous argument.




And now, to plagiarize Bradley, if you are reading this, consider yourself tagged.

Back from my brain break . . .

at least for a while, and I’ve recently (re)turned my attention to what I’ve referred to in a previous post as the ‘professional parcel,’ the marketing of oneself in academe. It’s a funny little dance, isn’t it? Complicated, or perhaps enhanced?, a tad by open-access blogs et al. glimpses of persona via the Web. From my Higher Ed Leadership and org theory coursework (and experience), I’ve come to appreciate the importance of institutional culture, collegial and human resource frameworks, and ‘fit’ (for both the institution and the individual) when it comes to building, enhancing, or contributing to an academic community.

To frame it another way (in my brain’s vernacular), the interviewing/hiring process is, like academe itself, an inherently rhetorical project: the claimant works to establish a desirable ethos in order to persuade her audience that the ‘brand’ of professional teacher/scholar/administrator (logos) and general human being (pathos?), an ethos that lends itself to the going academic/community/professional climate and is consistent with (or at the very least amenable to) the institutional mission and goals. This makes sense to me, but moving theory into practice is not, as always, quite so straightforward.

When I think of my ideal positions, which all have at least some explicit administrative/policy/leadership component, I realize that though from my perspective my training, experience, and scholarship may support in very specific ways the responsibilities associated with the position(s), those hiring for those positions may not necessarily see the connection between, say, rhetoric and administration. Goodness knows I’ve had plenty of practice trying to explain my decision to minor in Ed Leadership and Policy Analysis, though the marriage of the discrete areas seems perfectly logical to me—but I also have something of a tendency toward the enthymematic argument because by the time I reason out a particular conclusion I am so intimately familiar with the premises that got me there that they seem so readily apparent that I worry I will insult my audience by their mention; of course, I also suspect I am not unique in this regard. At any rate, I imagine negotiating the challenge of professional ‘fit’ is shared by just about every person who ever sought a job.

But then there’s the tricky personal tab of the personnel file, the one that could certainly influence ‘fit’ in ways not readily predicted by assessment of the professional profile and posture. Bradley spent some time considering this aspect of the job market dynamic a while back, with specific regard for marriage and political alignment, and in today’s Chronicle, Na'ema Suleiman (pseudonym) frames the consideration in terms of parenthood, specifically motherhood.

For me, the questions are these:

Just how much relevant ‘pathos’ should a person offer when marketing the ‘professional parcel’? Or, more to the point, what ‘pathos’ is relevant?

Does a Web presence actually offer a reprieve from directly engaging these personal matters? Or, is allowing your Web presence to communicate the sticky details that may or may not impact ‘fit’ too evasive or even devious? Or (again) might it serve as a form of passive resistance to answer the kinds of unfortunate circumstances that would make such disclosures a professional liability?

And, finally, the old question persists: would I want to present a version of myself that is in any way fragmented or incomplete . . . would I want to misrepresent myself or my priorities in any way to land the dream job? Would I want a position that required this of me? And what if my professional priorities and my personal priorities are neither in conflict nor inextricably intertwined, but are, to a relevant degree, mutually exclusive? Then is the question of ‘relevant pathos’ moot?

I’d be interested to hear other folks’ thoughts on this. It is exciting, and a little unsettling, to consider . . . but the real question, for me, when it comes right down to it, is this: will all this deliberation actually help me land a job, and once I do, will it help me do my job well?

Keening o’er My Mountain Mama

Oh, how it pains me to criticize my beloved West Virginia! But in light of recent happenings, I have to say to the folks back home,

Some a' y’all don’t seem to have the sense God gave a goose!

This brief but scattered catalogue of thoughts will, hopefully, illustrate what I mean:

I suppose it began with the–ahem–departure of West Virginia’s (former) favorite son, Coach Rodriguez. Real class act, this guy, ditching his boys following an embarrassing, devastating, and season-changing loss to Pitt . . . but before finishing out the season in the Fiesta Bowl (ah, that victory was the sweetest of all victories, and coupled with the raw emotion and Mountaineer Spirit demonstrated by Bill Stewart, Pat White, and the rest of the ‘Eers in the face of what had just gone down, that particular moment-in-sports was damn near poetic—but I digress . . .).

Real bum move, if you ask me, Rodriguez leaving the team before the season ended, but given the questionable leadership at WVU, I can’t help but wonder about the other side of the story.

Which brings me to my next rub:

What the heck is going on at WVU anyway?

First there’s the Executive MBA scandal involving the Governor’s daughter . Really, why not just award her an ‘honorary degree?’ Then they could avoid the scandal that comes with the falsification of transcripts and jump right to the gratuitous conferring of degrees; it seems the two actions are a mere hairbreadth apart these days, though—theoretically—they differ in principle.

Brief aside: my friend and colleague William Bradley has addressed the issue of honorary degrees more thoroughly on his blog in recent weeks, so if you’re interested I’d encourage you to visit The Ethical Exhibitionist/Academia.

Okay. Then there’s the push for proprietary rights over the work of creative writers at WVU by requiring students in the creative writing programs to make their masters’ theses available online. I realize that ownership/authorship of written work is complicated, and intellectual property is further complicated by the writer/researcher/institution dynamic; as I understand it, the university owns all intellectual property created by any member of the university community using university resources (understanding, too, that members of the university community themselves are resources, from an organizational standpoint), and therefore the university has the right to retain, reproduce, and distribute the work. I also understand that while individuals are permitted to copyright the same work, the university retains the additional intellectual property rights.

Another aside: U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign put together a handy little at-a-glance guide to this intellectual property chaos.

Complicated though they may be, there are plenty of good reasons for these protections, and most assume a certain reciprocity between author and institution; at the most basic level, an author’s copyright can protect his or her unique arrangement of words/symbols and the institution can protect his or her ideas. This works fine in the sciences where methods, procedures, practices–in essence, ideas—must be replicated for disciplinary integrity. But creative writing presents a different problem: it is here that the unique arrangement of words/symbols—the craft, process, and ‘finished’ work itself—does different work than the lab report or even the scholarly treatise, and the value—or at least part of the value—of a creative work is not that it can be replicated, but that it cannot. Further, these traditions belong to two different publishing cultures and two discrete philosophical paradigms. The concessions made by WVU administrators to allow students a five-year window to publish their creative work before posting it to the Web is not sufficient. It can be that a work is complete for the purpose of fulfilling degree requirements but is still in process in terms of its art, and it may take some time—even more than five years!—for the artist to refine and revise the work until the writer’s vision is actualized.

Regardless, what WVU has proposed for its creative writers is bad policy—and as a proponent of said bad policy Director of Creative Writing Mark Winegardner’s absurd argument, as quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that “it looks like the weird creative types are asking to be let out of gym class,” falls woefully short.

And finally, Clinton by a landslide? Pshaw. You know, only around 23% of eligible voters turned out for the Democratic primary (and, sadly, only roughly 12% turned out for the Republican primary back in February), and when only (roughly) a third of the voting population turns out, theirs are the voices that are heard—-but they may not be representative of the whole of the state, despite "random sample" arguments to the contrtary. Still, seeing Clinton win in West Virginia by such a margin is unsettling---and for a whole variety of reasons, but that's more than I really want to get into at the moment.


Besides, I really do believe that all of these instances that I’m bellyachin’ about—from the academic to the athletic to the political to the social—are the exception and not the rule in the great Wild, Wonderful. Of course, it is discouraging that only about a third of voters made it to the polls during this primary season, a trend hardly unique to West Virginia . . . but that’s another can of worms.

MWF, 32, ABD, seeks professional identity . . .

I suppose it’s easy for some: the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker. It starts, really, in college: the use of the standard template,

“Hi. I’m Darcy. I’m a sophomore butchery major.”
“Hello. I’m Nate, a third-semester senior culinary major with an emphasis in fondant.”
“I’m Jamie, a junior candlestick-arts major. Hi.”

Instant identity tag, and it serves an interesting, perhaps important, social-rhetorical function. So when it comes to describing what it is I do—or, given the cultural practice and expectations associated with professional “branding,” who I am—I’m having a bit of a crisis. Well, maybe not crisis, per se, but something. A shift. A reorganization of self-knowledge. A period of adjustment. In the Maslow/Goldstein model, I guess I’m not self-actualized at the moment.

It may be the nature of graduate school, one function of which is to move the individual from student-status to professional-status, that explains my unrest; as a graduate student, I have been at once a student and an instructor. But even that has become more complicated: as a Ph.D. candidate, I’ve completed all my coursework, so I’m a student without a classroom. I’m working on a project that I hope will make at least some meaningful and original contribution to the field–or, rather, to at least one of the multiple fields I’m attempting to negotiate—so I am a student in that I am learning more all the time, Ancora Imparo, but I’m no longer attending classes: that phase of my formal education is complete. My professors feel less like professors, in the traditional sense, and more like colleague/mentors; those who were my classmates are now decisively my colleagues. It is a strange awakening. Not at all unpleasant, but certainly strange.

Then there’s the actual professional practice of teaching. When I teach, and I say this without arrogance, I teach very well. I am invested in my students’ learning because I am invested in my subject. But I don’t think of myself as a teacher. This perplexes people when I say it. Their eyes, under a skeptical, furrowed brow, ask, “but aren’t you planning to be a professor? And aren’t professors teachers?” Well . . . yes. But I don’t think of myself as a teacher. A facilitator, most certainly, but a teacher? It’s hard to explain, but the teaching-learning dynamic is different in higher education; therefore, the role of the instructor is also different. Further, as of this writing I have not been in an instructional role for almost a year; instead, I’ve been serving as a WPA for the program in which I have taught for the last two years. So what does this have to do with my search for a professional identity? Here’s my reasoning:

If teaching is my first love—no, wait. If teaching writing is my first love—but no, that’s not quite right either. Writing is my first love; teaching writing is the maturation of that love. Still, I’m not certain I want to marry my first love. Without it, though, I couldn’t understand the role of a WPA (my new love?); I couldn’t be an advocate for the multiple constituencies—most importantly the students and their instructors—invested in the program, and I wouldn’t understand the policies and practices that inform the culture of the writing program(s) I serve, nor could I grasp the implications of said policies and practices.

Add to all of this that my field is rhetoric, at once unintentionally esoteric and ubiquitous and generally misunderstood; that my scholarly interests and curiosities are about as orderly as the flickering of fireflies over a hayfield in late August; and that, in addition, I still consider myself something of a poet, essayist, Jazz Age Literature scholar, et al., then the process of branding becomes even more complicated: when I try to explain to folks what I do, I am met with the very same skeptical, furrowed brow as referenced above.

So every little pebble I’ve cobbled together to this point in my career reveals nothing, yet, of a cogent professional identity. The artistic, slightly bohemian side of me says, “Oh, how delightfully chaotic,” but the “old-style conservative realist” (Lieven) in me says, “Focus. Get organized. Be precise. You can’t market what you can’t parcel.” Given that it will soon be my turn to commit myself to the academic job market, my old-style conservative realist makes a compelling argument, but this collage is proving difficult to brand.

The Mitchell Report and Cultural Change

Today’s release of the Mitchell Report reminds me of an old, dear friend of mine in high school who was abusing steroids. He was a sweet kid, and I remember even then that I was so worried about him that, for a class, I did a research project on steroid use and athletics so I could try to learn more and convince him that aiming for biceps the size of my waist was not worth the risk he was taking.

I came of age in what has now been dubbed the Steroid Era in sports, and I find the implications of such a moniker more than disturbing: they are misleading. The truth is that performance enhancing techniques are not at all limited to athletics, and congressional inquiries that call out professional athletes do little to mitigate the problem.

Here’s what I mean: ours is a culture obsessed with performance, with besting, with record breaking, with exponentially—and often falsely—inflating human capital. In a competitive market, this drive for ‘excellence’ can be a useful thing, something that spurs progress and resourcefulness. But when any capital is falsely inflated, including human capital, the consequences can be devastating. Where, then, is the line? The balance?

Case in point: a recent study at Columbia confirmed what those in academe have heard about in hushed asides for some time: students’ abuse of drugs like Adderall and Ritalin to enhance their academic performance through increased concentration has risen sharply over the last 15 years—somewhere in the vicinity of a 93% increase. What was once an overuse of caffeine in academic life has become an abuse of other types of pharmacological stimulants. Students who turn to these measures have little difficulty rationalizing their choice because taking measures to improve oneself in any manner possible to achieve ‘excellence’ is deeply ingrained in our cultural attitude.

Arguably, as our technologies advance, as we demand more of ourselves, as we understand more about the ways our bodies and minds perform, it is logical to apply our emergent findings and resources and meld body with science in order to increase our collective human capital. When one considers the ways in which scientific intervention has allowed individuals to improve their quality of life—I myself have titanium in my ear where my malfunctioning stapes used to be—the occasional misuse of drugs to enhance performance—say, during finals or during the World Series—follows an accepted cultural trend.

Now, before anyone accuses me of making a faulty argument through a false analogy (or worse), let me be clear: I understand that correcting a hearing impairment is very different, ethically, than abusing steroids or Ritalin or any other controlled substance. I also want to make clear that I am neither endorsing nor condoning the misuse of substances to increase performance; I am merely trying to make the point that given our cultural climate, the use of such performance enhancing techniques should not be surprising.

To my mind, the Mitchell Report speaks to a cultural issue, not a policy issue. This brings me to my main contention: what, exactly, is the role of governance in shaping culture? While this question is central to my dissertation, it holds particular importance as we approach an historic presidential election where most if not all candidates are running on a platform focusing on cultural or social issues rather than policy issues. While the relationship between governance and culture cannot and should not be denied, relying on governance or repeatedly turning to governance to mitigate social and cultural trends and problems absolves those who are truly responsible for cultural change: we individuals who regularly define through our actions and voices and choices our collective cultural identity.

Teaching Philosophy

Of late, I have been thinking more about my teaching philosophy, what grounds it, and how it informs my practice. This is ironic, perhaps, because I am not actually in the classroom this year, but I am, rather, serving in an administrative capacity for the program in which I taught for the last two years. I love the administrative work, and maybe it is because of the distance from classroom practice---or the regular encounter with other instructors' teaching philosophies and practices---that I am able to think more about my own.

My statement:

My teaching is informed by two positions: first, I believe that teaching, like all educational efforts, is an inherently rhetorical social practice. By this I suggest that teaching involves the dynamic interplay of ethos, pathos, and logos at a particular time and in a particular space (kairos) in order to persuade those involved to actively participate in the teaching-learning dynamic, for learning occurs only when those involved "buy-in" to the process.

It is my responsibility to construct an honest, responsive, and informed ethos that invites learners to engage; through preparedness, flexibility, reciprocity, temperance, empathy, and responsiveness to the unique circumstances each participant brings into the learning environment, pathos, I strive to foster a trusting and secure space where students will have the opportunity to explore their own and others’ knowledge and assumptions. I also believe in supplementing the learning that occurs in the group environment with regular, individualized instruction to ensure, to the best of my ability, that each student’s needs and expectations are being met, that each student and his or her work is recognized and respected. Finally, I invite my students to devise ways to make the course relevant to their own professional and personal development by selecting materials and designing assignments that offer a variety of approaches and perspectives, involve current events and figures, confront timely issues, and explore the implications of these perspectives and events; in this way, the content of the course, its logos, is balanced: it is both grounded and emergent.

Second, I believe that writing is a science, a craft, and an art. Through the introduction of method, form, and logical reasoning—as well as of rhetorical tropes, schemes, conventions, and modes—I attempt to reveal the science of writing, the "tools" that are available to writers and readers of texts. Never presented as prescriptive, but as techne that may be used by the writer as he or she chooses, these formal structures are effectively neutralized—a process that is explicitly discussed—giving writers power over them and over their writing; I have found that this approach lends students, especially, the confidence they often need to engage the writing process: what was once potentially dominating and oppressive becomes manageable and in service to the writer writing. It also provides an interpretive lens through which to view other texts. And, like a poet engages form, I charge students with the task of allowing their work to "find the form" that best compliments their ideas; this is the moment that the science meets the craft.

Writing is a deliberate act, and explicitly acknowledging writing as craft empowers writers to feel more in control of their prose. Further, it debunks the persistent myth of natural ability.

Finally, writing is an art. It is an act of creation and a symbolic extension of self. While this view is, admittedly, somewhat romanticized, when balanced against perspectives of writing that suggest both science and craft, it serves to allow students to invest themselves in their own writing, critique other texts critically and ethically, and take ownership of the writing act.

The relationship between these positions shapes the way I plan and design the courses I teach, the way I engage or attempt to engage the students with whom I work, the way I respond to events or challenges that arise in the learning environment, and the way I approach my scholarship. I see my role as one of facilitator but also as participant, and I recognize the absolute heterogeneity of interests, identities, ideologies, and investments at work in the learning dynamic.

I am also ever cognizant of my role and the role of the courses I teach in relation to the larger project of higher education, the specific mission of the course, and the departmental, programmatic, historical, and institutional contexts in which my teaching is situated. My job as an effective teacher, then, is to be aware of the nested missions and multiple stakeholders involved in the teaching transaction and to negotiate among them.

What is the Place of Rhetoric in Composition?

I have been surprised, over the last several weeks, to realize just how difficult it is to address the question at hand: just what is the place of rhetoric in composition? Until I actually tried to articulate my position, in preparation for our program's first C&R colloquium of the season, I assumed, intuited perhaps, that my view of the field was clear and secure. Yet, any premise I draw becomes transient—-almost ephemeral–-the moment I try to build upon it. I’ve realized, then, that perhaps this is the nature of the field: it is adaptable, malleable. It is not a static body. It defies categorical conclusions. It is emergent. And it has been so for 2400 years.

Still, we have for the most part such anxiety about defining the discipline. Maybe this anxiety is in error: I am not convinced that ('big-D') Disciplinarity lends legitimacy or authority. With entities such as composition and rhetoric—-and despite my use of the conjunction I do believe they are discrete but similar systems-—we are dealing with complex forces, practices, objectives, histories, and pedagogies. With all the complexity, and all the possibilities for unique configurations, it seems to me impossible to view the field categorically or with the precision necessary for defining a discipline.

Having said that, I do think it is possible to offer a purview of the field. Describing what we do as a 'field' works for me because metaphorically it seems appropriate: a field, such as a hay field or corn field, offers an image of a vast space that can serve at different times many purposes; it changes according to multifarious and dynamic circumstances; to my mind (being a Pennsylvania gal) the landscape is rolling, creating a canvas of light and shadow at different times and in different seasons; it is both enduring and fragile; mostly, though, it is a location. In this way, the field of composition and rhetoric serves as a location for two components: composition and rhetoric. While different, they inform each other in significant ways.

I define rhetoric as the ways that symbols achieve efficacy. Here, I see 'efficacy' very much aligned with Aristotle’s notion of persuasion and 'ways' as "available means." I also recognize that the efficacy of symbols is not secure; it shifts with time, place, and purpose; it emerges in interaction. Defined such, rhetoric is inescapable—-but that doesn’t mean that it is limiting, because efficacy does not exist outside of kairos but rather emerges through it. I don’t believe this process is unlike poetry and poetic form: form must never be imposed on poetic expression. Rather, the expression must find the form that aids or enhances its expression; this is the only way to achieve poetic efficacy. I think this is the mistake that many current-traditional pedagogies make: in the name of efficiency, they compromise efficacy. I also think that it is the fear or resistance of imposition and efficiency that serves as the rationale that drives rhetoric out of composition.

The way I see it, though, composition is not only informed by rhetoric, it is itself rhetorical. Composition is both a creative and communicative act that adopts a mission that is closely tied to education and social justice. In fact, I don’t think it is possible to legitimately and responsibly discuss composition without addressing education and social justice. Rhetoric is implicated in all of these areas: the creative, the communicative, the educational, and the social. The creative act involves, among other things, invention, delivery, and cultural awareness. The communicative act involves utterance and audience, and here Furberg’s observation that “the phonetic act, the phatic act and the rhetic act are not subclasses, but parts of the locutionary act” is helpful in that it offers important insight into the dynamics of utterance: its power lies not in any one force but in the interrelatedness of several different forces: the epistemological (rhetic), the social (phatic), and the aural (phonetic). From a rhetorical perspective, Furberg’s synthesis of these three qualities associated with utterance may be understood in terms of the rhetorical triad, the interdependency of ethos, pathos, and logos in the Aristotelian paradigm, and the ways this relationship affords discursive efficacy. It offers a way of examining interaction through the dynamic alignment of rhetic/logos/text, phatic/ethos/author, phonetic/pathos/audience and the process of negotiation that occurs during interaction.

As for composition’s interests, the educational and the social, an important concern for education is “buy in” among different constituencies. At the institutional level, administrators and leaders must demonstrate and persuade state and federal supporters, as well as private investors, that their project, their institution, is worthy of continued or new funding. At the local, classroom level, instructors are hard-pressed to achieve their pedagogical objectives if students don't "buy in" to the course, if they don't--or can't--engage, take ownership, or otherwise invest themselves in the learning environment. At it's core, "buy in" is about persuasion and is, therefore, rhetorical. Further, because of its ties to and awareness of ethics, Rhetoric lends itself in theory and in practice to concerns of social justice. To my mind, and for all these reasons, rhetoric is solidly positioned in composition as much as it exists outside of it.

The question, then, is of relationship. Does rhetoric need composition? Probably. Mostly, though, our question, when it comes right down to it, is one of relationship, reciprocity, and symbiosis. I don’t think it is difficult to see evidence of these qualities “in each case.”

Addressing Tragedy in the Writing Classroom

On Tuesday, April 17, I made a decision to open the class up to a discussion regarding the events that occurred at Virginia Tech the day before. I have been thinking more about that decision, and in doing so I have realized, learned, or have been reminded of a few things that have shaped my teaching.

What I did:

Having begun a unit on creative nonfiction a week prior, my plan for the day was to open class by posing the question of whether language, specifically writing, can adequately capture the complexity and entirety, the enormity, of experience. I hoped to invite a discussion based on my students’ experiences and their perceptions of writing, grounded in the work we did as a class in the previous two units, and related to the texts, three nonfiction essays, that were assigned for that day. I then planned to move to a discussion of rhetorical modes, or forms, that are helpful (rather than prescriptive) in trying to capture and organize experience.

On Monday, the context for this discussion shifted. How was I to raise questions about capturing the enormity of experience in class on Tuesday without talking about the events at Virginia Tech the day before? Not doing so, it seemed to me at the time, seemed callous and disconnected; a discussion on this topic that ignored Virginia Tech would be a discussion in the presence of the proverbial elephant.

While I deliberated on whether to address it and how to go about it, I was struck by the ethical dilemma the situation posed: to what degree would a discussion of the Virginia Tech tragedy exploit the tragedy and the experiences of those involved? Was bringing these events into the classroom a tactless move? I still wasn’t certain when I walked to my classroom.

I begin each class period with a bit of "business," and then usually mention something about current events relevant to whatever we’ve been discussing in class and solicit responses from my students. This usually "primes the pump" before we transition into the class topic for the day. I began Tuesday’s class the same way, taking care of business, then it clicked: I had to introduce the topic of Virginia Tech. It was appropriate at that time and in that context to talk about current events. To ignore the previous day’s events, to skip the current events segment, would have made a statement that I wasn’t prepared to make.

I began with some hesitation, first asking if anyone in the room had friends or relatives at VT. I then asked if the group wished to discuss the events. Everyone agreed, but the discussion did not proceed without some awkwardness. One student hadn’t heard the news; since I had assumed everyone had, I did not begin by summarizing, but after the student asked what happened, the class reconstructed what they know from the media and that led into a discussion of the validity of early reports, misinformation, etc.

Then one student asked how, as writing instructors, we can assess writing, how we can tell the difference between writing that is creative or kathartic or just 'bad' and that which signals danger. It was a different kind of question, one that was not posed to the class but directly to me, asking for my authority or expertise on the issue. I answered him the best I could: that I didn’t know. That writing can only be assessed on a case by case basis and in context. That small class size and regular one-on-one conferencing is important because if writing seems troubled, perhaps that writing can be cross-referenced with the writer’s interpersonal behavior. Perhaps. I said, "Imagine how an early Tarantino script might look to a new TA." There’s just no real way to tell. I also pointed to what action the English faculty took, or at least that which was reported in the earliest days following the massacre, and said that we can only hope for best practices and to use the resources on campus to try to reach out to those who may seem troubled. But that is delicate territory, too.


This is now the second time I’ve faced something like this in my teaching. The first, of course, was on and after September 11, 2001. When a tragedy of such magnitude ripples the waters of our collective social experience, what is the place of writing? of writing classrooms? as instructors, what are our responsibilities and limitations? Here are a few things I've been considering:

• Writing instructors are not trained or qualified to diagnose, or treat, serious problems. Writing instructors are not therapists . . . YET as writing instructors, we are often placed in that position, I think because of the nature of writing. It is at once personal and social. There is something to be said for engaging students at that level, for establishing rapport, but it is essential that we, to the best of our ability, continually examine and be cognizant of our personal and professional boundaries. When a student is working through something difficult and wants to talk, I have found in my practice that it is useful to be open to that . . . to a degree. If the conversation becomes too much like therapy, I try to tactfully steer the context, not the content, of the talk back to the writing. It is also essential to familiarize ourselves with the resources available on campus and use them. As one of my professors noted, consultation, communication, is key. To discuss concerns with aprropraite people through appropriate channels does not violate FERPA, and it may be the most important decision one can make in this context.

• Best practices are often defined by what is already established in the classroom. For me, the structure and content of my class lent itself to a discussion of the events at Virginia Tech. In this case, it was more appropriate for me to open the discussion that it would have been to ignore it. The ethical dilemma was resolved by the context of my course.
  I also realized how much of my teaching style is actually informed by my teaching philosophy. I believe in designing a course that make the assignments and content relevant to my students’ personal and professional interests. I am also committed to making explicit connections between the work we do in the classroom and the significance of lived practice, which is one of the reasons I try to connect current events to the issues that ground the course. This is my approach; in this case, my teaching philosophy directly influenced my practice.

• Give the students a say. I believe this is what, in organizational theory, is called shared governance. It is also referred to as decentralized authority, or a student-centered classroom, depending on what lens you use to view the landscape. This can be taken too far, of course, but understanding that balance is important.

• "It is okay to admit that you don’t have all the answers. In fact, it is better to admit that you don’t know than try to pretend that you do. Your students will never be fooled." Dr. Teresa Hunt, who just passed away last December, was the first person to teach me how to teach. She was a brilliant and caring instructor whose dedication to her students, undergraduate and graduate, was laudable, remarkable. This was one of her gems.

While the VT tragedy is set apart because of its magnitude, it seems to me that at any time writing instructors may be faced with delicate and challenging circumstances that directly impact the classroom, the students, or a student. What we as instructors do in those moments is as much a part of the rhetorical process, and is as essential to learning about writing, as the curriculum itself.