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.

The Palin Rhetoric

So, I admit it: I've been a lazy blogger of late, more often cribbing discussions I've been having on Facebook than posting original content. But hey--I'm claiming intercontextuality and continuing with the trend (truly, though, I just happen to think some discussions are worth of wider circulation).

The most recent lazy blog, then, comes from a story posted by my friend, Bradley, who readers may notice makes a frequent cameo on this blog. Anywho . . .

Today Bradley posted a link to Dahlia Lithwick's piece for Slate, "Lost in Translation: Why Sarah Palin really quit us." Thought provoking and accurate, the piece got me thinking, so here are my 2-cents:

I couldn't agree more with Lithwick--but I think it goes even a little deeper than a lack of rhetorical finesse. I think Palin is trying to invoke a particular vernacular that signals that she is a "real deal, everyday American gal." I have always argued that Bush-43 utilized a very carefully crafted ethos through his bumbling, good ol' boy vernacular--and say what you will, it worked for a long, long while. His manner mitigated the ivy league/working class tensions that exist in the minds of many, and it prompted his opponents to "misunderestimate" him. Ultimately, that ethos failed and came back to bite him, but I have little doubt that it contributed to his initial, broad appeal. Still, when necessary, Bush could deliver a clear message and even a powerful, effective speech (think his 9/11 speech, which is, rhetorically speaking, quite well crafted and effective).

Now, for Palin (and thanks to Bush-43) that card had been played, and it is now a tired routine. That was strike 1. Strike 2: Palin never played that card half as well as former President Bush.

Strike 3, I think, came in the form of her bull-headed unwillingness to think about her audience and unique rhetorical situation. I've known plenty of people with good ideas who simply cannot communicate them; I've known wonderful communicators who were, after the lovely rhetoric, devoid of good ideas. Palin, I think is a unique case. She seems uninterested in communicating, and so we are left wondering IF she has good ideas. It seems that Palin speaks for an audience of ONE (that one, of course, being herself--and therefore, her discourse is deeply encoded, perforated as if awaiting Gestalt intervention). In studying interaction, once can really only observe and assess what the participants treat as real; in Palin's case, even that is unclear.

Ultimately, she reminds me of the student--and anyone who teaches writing and rhetoric at an intermediate or advanced level knows this student-- who writes in a jumbled, garbled, rambling, ‘noisy’ style completely devoid of internal logic and who seems insulted, affronted that you, as the instructor, don’t ‘get’ his or her genius. It is a challenge to explain just where the writing goes wrong, and a greater challenge to convince the student that there is a problem, one that he or she can overcome.

Ultimately, both parties can end up repeating themselves with growing frustration as they ride this rhetorical Ferris wheel, an unsalvageable situation until at least one party is willing and able to shift into critical engagement mode and slow the ride. In the case of Sarah Palin, neither party seems willing—and she seems particularly resistant, electing instead to yell “faster, faster!”

I think her resignation is a direct result of this crazy ride. Her motivation may truly be noble, but who could tell? And that, I think, is truly unfortunate.

What I Have to Show . . .

D-I-double S-E-R-T-A-T-I-O-N
Should have based my study on Ralph Ellison
Or maybe I just should have stayed in medicine . . .

D-I-double S-E-R-T-A-T-E
It’s a word-- have you heard?--
guaranteed to perturb
It’s Dissertate! for me.

D-I-double S-E-R-T-A-T-I-O-N
Though I really kinda dig the theory
Foucault and Derrida can make me weary.

D-I-double S-E-R-T-A-T-E
Writer’s block, watch the clock,
Read a little more of Locke.
It’s Dissertate! for me.

One more time!

D-I-double S-E-R-T-A-T-I-O-N
Who knew it could inspire such self-loathing?
(Oh, suck it up and quit your damn bemoaning.)

D-I-double S-E-R-T-A-T-E
It’s the path that I chose,
Now I’m off to compose . . .
It’s Dissertate! for me.


Okay, so now that that's out of the way . . .

Communities of Discourse . . . In the Community

I have the good fortune to count among my good friends two colleagues, Dr. William Bradley and soon-to-be-Dr. Heidi Stevenson, whose intelligence is rivaled only by their sense(s) of humor. Witty, thoughtful, ethical, and fair, Bill and Heidi consistently command my attention and respect, and I can always count on them for exceptional conversations—from the inane to the profound. That is why, spurred by a conversation we began on facebook this morning and at Bill’s suggestion, I have decided to post this entry.

A recent news item profiled a teacher in Milwaukee who, after finding graffiti adorning public property in her community, decided to ‘fight back’ by posting red flyers critiquing the graffiti artist’s/ perpetrator’s (depending on your stance) grammar. The story, appearing in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has already been taken up by numerous other news outlets. For those of us with an investment in composition and rhetoric, as well as in education, Beth Biskobing—the teacher in question—misses the mark, as well as an important teaching opportunity.

As Heidi noted when she posted the story to her profile, “This woman has no concept of the term ‘discourse community.’” And this is where the conversation begins. What follows is a compilation, in part, of our conversation:

C: Hahahaha . . . imagine a world where graffiti employs 'proper, correct' English grammar!

Still, I kinda dig her for bringing graffiti in to her class and "geekifying" it. At least she is, inherently, showing how language may employ different conventions and works in different contexts--even if she doesn't explicitly address it as such.

H: That's the part that bugs me--not explicitly addressing the fact that her "proper" grammar is only proper and functional in a very specific context--and don't get me started on her lack of discussion of why or how it's proper. The critical pedagogue part of me bristles at the thought of this. The ecocompositionist part of me shakes her head and sighs. All that said, the thought of graffiti written in academic, "Standard English" is pretty funny.

C: Well, true. But it's a start, right? Just another reason I would love to see more conversations between K-12 educators and Comp/Rhet scholars: I understand that primary and secondary educators have different constraints, but so much of the pedagogy—especially secondary pedagogy—seems to ignore the research in the field. As you point out, and as this teacher's exercise shows, such research is certainly relevant to primary and secondary teaching practice. It is a conversation worth having . . . and a fun lesson, to boot.

B: [posting a slightly different version of the same news story to his profile:] I can agree that the question "Where da bitches at?" is offensive, but it's not because it ends with a preposition, for God's sake. I can't imagine that this type of pedantic arrogance serves any purpose other than making the teacher herself feel smug. Hey, fellow English teachers? THIS is why students hate us. Just sayin', is all.

[. . .] this version (which is a bit longer [. . .] has some fairly obnoxious quotes from the teacher). I've never met this woman, but I feel quite confident I know her. You know what I mean? As you said, this is a woman who has never even heard the phrase "discourse community"-- instead, she's just convinced that "black people speak incorrectly." And, again, the misogyny in the question isn't even discussed, really (except for the too-precious-for-words "bitches are female dogs, betcha didn't know that, tee-hee!"). But then again, this isn't about having a teachable moment-- it's about grammatical shaming.

H: Yep. She's "smart," and she'll never let anyone forget it. It's sad to see that as the guiding principle behind a person's teaching.

C:The posting of flyers is a bit much, no? Ever the Pollyanna, I tried to make lemonade out of this, but there is so much more than a fine line between a 'teaching moment' and, as you say, Bill, pedantic arrogance.

But hey--why should K-12 teachers worry themselves about little things like discourse communities and understanding how and why particular conventions develop within them? Why bother with such nuisances as cultural assumptions? Why contextualize when one can boil everything down to right and wrong? After all, isn't it our job--as post-secondary instructors--to debunk such myths? That is what we do in FYC, right? Otherwise, what might we teach?*

Guess the coffee kicked in. Where I fist saw potential, a step toward having such discussions in the K-12 classrooms, now I'm just annoyed.

What a lost opportunity. It is one thing to bring the graffiti into the classroom to discuss it; it is quite another to ignore its context and post flyers in the community that, in essence, state "I know more than you." Foolish. Rude. Faulty.

But I still see it as a teaching moment—for her.

H: It has potential--just quite possibly lost potential, and that makes me sad. It could have been an introduction to the issue I brought up in regards to your link this morning--academic and public writing. It could have been a moment in which that teacher helped her students understand that people whose writing deviates from the academic norm are wrong, or stupid . . .it just seems like she ignored that opportunity and did the exact opposite.

B: [I’ll] just add—all joking aside—that I think you and Heidi are absolutely right when you talk about this being a teachable moment for her. This could have been an opportunity to discuss discourse communities-- hell, she could have even taken the opportunity to explain the value in being fluent in more than one discourse, because there are people out there who believe "academic=correct" and "urban slang=incorrect." But instead she just posted these cutesy little signs berating the vandal (and, coincidentally, creating an even more irritating eyesore for her neighborhood) for his "errors."

I also think that there might have been a useful conversation about the term "bitches" among urban youth to describe women in general, and to ask about the possessive assumptions that underlie the question of "where they at?" There's legitimate ignorance to criticize in this discourse community, but the problem isn't that their English doesn't always sound like mine.

So what? Well, only that here you have the informal conversation of three people deeply invested in education and language who are troubled by Beth Biskobing’s ‘rebuttal.’ Her actions serve little purpose and offer nothing of real substance to the situation. This was an opportunity rich with potential—for discussing language, rhetoric, communities of discourse, cultural assumptions, exigence (i.e. what might have compelled the agent to act?), kairos (at that time), and all the other elements of a rhetorical situation (see Bitzer)—so many possibilities presented to this teacher of language.

In short, Biskobing missed an opportunity to teach—and even understand—the relationship between critical thinking and language.

Instead, Biskobing wields her ‘learning’ as a weapon, ignoring the fact that language is situated, that rules and conventions are only appropriate and useful in a particular and unique context, and that correctness is determined by the entirety of a rhetorical situation, one that is informed by a complex web of cultural meaning. With her action, completely devoid of rhetorical awareness, she merely capitalized on an opportunity to “show off’ her mad grammatical skills


. . . or might that be ‘skilz.’

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

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?

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.

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.

"Without gerunds, your nightmare would've just recurred."

Lucy (a.k.a. my very own amor socraticus--or, in the incredibly annoying contemporary vernacular, my BFF), who works for the New York Times, sent me this link, and it is just too enjoyable not to pass along for those of you, like me, for whom language is religion.

Little aside: religion though it may be, I would not consider myself blindly devout in my worship and am reminded here of Frost's observation, "You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country." Just sayin' is all.

From the blue semicolon dude to the comments posted by readers (I took the name for this post from my particular favorite), what you will find here is about as enjoyable as a hot, hot, hot Venti, non-fat, sugar-free caramel latte on a cold, cold, COLD Wisconsin morning. Enjoy!


http://gawker.com/358157/nyt-makes-comma-error-inside-semicolon-article

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.