Aristotle characterized ethos as something vital for any public speaker's effectiveness.
When we are online, all our audience has to judge us by is our words. Over time, those words build up, crystalizing an impression of who we are and what we mean, and what we will mean in the future. Unlike speech, which careens off into the ozone and disappears, our words online linger and color what we say later. Who among us hasn't sent a piece of mail that we wish we hadn't, only to have it come back later?
Being online means we need to consider our words in terms of reputation management. What we say online will remain. For years. That may make us more careful, but is that really a bad thing? When our words are our only currency, is it bad to want to spend wisely?
(the Aristotle/Ethos stuff is via Charles Paine)
I thought that Michael's pre-class assignment was a great way in to talking about Z's difficult article. I also liked the fact that he took a non-biased position as he listened to our somehwat impassioned responses to the article. In hindsight I wished that I had opened the Faigley discussion differently-- I had not planned to summarize the reading beforehand, but out of nervousness I guess, that's what started to come out!
As a student presenter of a text to classmates, that is a legitimate way to talk about a chapter, but less valuable for a teacher, and I don't think I would actually ever do that in a real teaching situation. As I was speaking I realized that I was encapsulating "my take" on the readings rather than eliciting the class for "their takes." So that I would do differently if I did it again.
I wanted to tell you all what it was that prompted me to choose the writing questions that I did, since a few people were curious what prompted the question about having your subjectivity as a student challenged by a teacher. If we had more time in class, I wanted to share my example of this.
I was studying abroad in India, Nepal and Bhutan as an undergraduate, and our teacher/leader was a real character-- brilliant man who's lived in India for 20 years, speaks seven languages, friend of the Dalai Lama, etc. He was a real adventurer type. Well one of our early assignments was some sort of personal response to our initial experience living in a little village in India with Tibetan refugees. I have to say it was quite traumatic at first. I was 19 years old, never having been out of America before-- and suddenly I'm in India, seeing lepers and women with skinny babies begging, and all kinds of new things. So my response was from the heart, an inner dialogue of sorts of my disturbance at seeing the human suffering and feeling like a rich imperialist. It was an emotionally vulnerable and what I feel feminine, piece of writing. Well our teacher responded quite strongly and negatively to my piece. It was my "attitude" he didn't like. He basically told me to "lighten up" and look at things differently, assumedly, look at them his way. I was shocked and confused by the whole thing. And I felt my emotional sensibilities were being attacked somehow. It had a distinctly masculinist dimension I felt. What was being negated was an emotional response to human suffering, and also that I chose to focus on human suffering when as a student I should have been more happy-go-lucky isn't this great to be here, kind of thing. The irony is that as the semester progressed several bizarre incidents ocurred which really highlighted the schism between the women student's experience and the men's-- to the point of total crisis actually. The two male teachers actually ended up enlisting their girlfriends to come and join the trip to try to alleviate the situation. I have often wanted to write about the whole thing but it still is very confusing to me.
That's where I was coming from in my writing assignment. I truly felt my "subjectivity" was rejected, not my writing per se. My perception and way of making meaning out of experience were judged by someone in authority. I will never forget that. Especially since I was revealing myself in riskier ways than other students, I felt more exposed and rejected from then on. Something for teachers to keep in mind when they respond to student writing.
Jennifer’s writing prompt was excellent. I felt like it really called on me to take a close look at myself. She prompted us to write about an experience when a teacher did not accept our subjectivity in our writing or about what we think academia accepts as appropriate subjectivity.
I couldn’t think of a time when who I am as a writer, the “me” as represented in my writing, was criticized by one of my teachers, so I chose to answer the second prompt. Because I am currently a writing teacher, I decided to answer the prompt from my own teacherly perspective of “appropriate” subjectivity in student writing. Attempting to define how I want my students to make themselves known through their writing was kind of an uncomfortable process because I had to admit to myself the many assumptions and judgments I place on my students’ writing. That is, in arriving at my definition of correct expression of subjectivity I had to confront the fact that I have many rules around how students should reveal themselves and many beliefs about what skills they should already have once they come into my classroom. While reflecting on my own approach as a teacher is ultimately a productive process, it can be uncomfortable in the moment. And, at various moments during my writing as prompting by Jennifer, I definitely felt a bit uncomfortable. But any discomfort I felt was definitely not associated with her. Rather it was associated with the poignancy of her question/prompt.
I very much appreciated the way Jennifer listened to all of us as we shared what we wrote. I never felt rushed while I was giving my response. Rather, I felt like she gave me sufficient space to air my thoughts. I say “space” instead of “time” because, while in the teacher role, I felt like Jennifer quieted her own judgments and personality during our sharing in such a way that allowed us to very openly and fully express ourselves. This skill is sadly uncommon in the teachers that I have had and in the teachers that I know, and it is perhaps the most important teacherly asset.
I would like to comment on Michael’s presentation in particular and how I see him as a teacher in general.
First, Micheal’s presentation, though cut short due to lack of time on Wednesday, was effective in helping me to articulate my frustration with the “Z” text. Because my own comments about the text followed Jennifer and Stephanie, I felt like much of what I had to say about it had already been articulated. One thing that Michael did to allow my feelings in this area to be satisfied is that he asked us start with just making any comments about the text that we wanted to make. I believe he also asked us to be brief, didn’t he? Anyhow, giving us initial freedom in what we chose to remark on and encouraging us to keep our remarks brief encouraged me to access my visceral reactions to the text, while at the same time forcing me to condense my feelings into a few sentences. I felt like Jennifer and Stephanie (and Carolyn, though her comments came after mine) did such a fine job of stating their responses briefly in a way that still carried the full power of the emotional content of their reactions. Michael’s prompt helped this come about.
Perhaps his pre-class assignment allowed us all to articulate our responses to the text prior to coming into class. At least, it had that effect on me. I appreciated very much the fact that Michael let us investigate Faigley and Zavarzadeh freely. He said in his instructions of the writing assignment that we need not be concerned about finding paragraphs that related to each other. Thus I was able to dive into Fiagely and Z with only my personal interest as a guide. Actually, even though Michael didn’t create any angst, I was somewhat concerned about how the class might respond to my selection of paragraphs. This concern somewhat influenced my choice, but not much.
Regarding Michael’s teaching in general, I will say that I am always impressed by the depth of his creative intelligence and integrity. Though I know him more as a peer than when he is in the position of teacher, I cant imagine that he changes much when he steps into the classes that he teaches. I imagine that the creative fire inside of him is as expressive and evident to his students as it is in our Wednesday classes. One thing that is so beautiful about Micheal’s creative intelligence is that he shares it with others in a very mutually respectful way. That is, I always have the feeling that he wants to elicit the creativity in others rather than using his own amazing creativity to squash the creativity that resides in his students and peers.
A final few comments. Although I enjoyed trying to figure out how Michael was going to use our assignments, I did feel a bit anxious about not knowing precisely how they were going to be used. But, now that I write this, I realize that my engagement and excitement at wondering how he was going to use them far outweighed any anxiety I experienced. This makes me think that it may be productive to leave some stages of an assignment unknown to students because it may help them engage the assignment more genuinely. It may help them reflect on the parameters of the assignment itself and on their reactions to what they are being asked to do. Hmm……Yet another of Micheal’s strategies that I may adapt to my own use.
I find myself reading these critical reading exercises through Michael’s lens of “size-time” now, trying to think how these techniques might be modified to suit the constraints of a large class. No answers yet. In contrast to Jennifer’s taking the lead in summarizing and “ordering” a reading, Michael asked for general impressions and took notes on the board. I was sitting so far to the side that I lost the benefit of this jottings.
That we didn’t have time for the side-by-side exercise is disappointing. But it also strikes me that we err in thinking that the entire value of an assigned exercise is the classroom or communal experience of it. The act of having to make selections at home by myself made me a much closer reader of both articles. I found myself marking possibilities for selection with two expectations: I was going to have to explain to the class why I selected what I did, and this would entail a some planned justification. I interpreted Michael’s instruction “not to worry about whether or not the paragraphs had anything to do with each other” with skepticism and caution—but then found that both discarding and attending to that advice proved quite productive. The “don’t worry” directive was quite freeing. Had I not had this instruction, I would have eliminated paragraphs that I really liked and desired to put forth in deference to the “match” or “contrast” principle. Yet still I was mentally weaving the texts together with my own words in anticipation of a demand to do so in class or, given the formatting, to do something similar to someone else’s paragraph selections. It strikes me that the seemingly petty constraints of format (the fussy business of the columns and the landscape orientation) were quite conscientiously designed to enforce the “relationship” between paragraphs. Michael exerted his pedagogical will via design instructions that often go unresented and unremarked by students (just more margin talk). And in so directing the “act of writing” Michael freed himself to say “don’t make these paragraphs relate to each other.” I did find myself finally selecting and deselecting paragraphs mainly on the criteria of what I thought would interest the class. I found myself veering away from controversial texts that I could picture people reacting to strongly—and maybe this is a reaction to the passion of Stephanie’s presentation last week—so we can see how local discourse conditions constrain and enable “freedom” of expression. I also like the sense of anticipation and surprise that was built into this assignment. Because I didn’t know exactly what would happen, I was looking forward to being experimented on. And I guess this too is a function of community trust built over time. I was not expecting to be made uncomfortable—what I felt was more akin to eager anticipation than to anxiety about getting the “right” paragraphs down.
Working exclusively with Faigley’s chapter 4, Jennifer led us “into” the text first by offering an overview based on the very classification scheme that Faigley offers by way of his headings. This intuitive approach made me think about whether or not I myself tend to read in a classifying mode, using the writer’s suggested headings to organize the information as I go. I think I do not do this so I'm wondering why not.
Jennifer was in effect teaching reading strategies this way, and she was also modeling the technique of summing up after reading. I was imagining that she might similarly model this reading strategy in composition classs, then let her students take up the habit as a matter of routine. Next Jennifer asked each of us to call up an experience of being “selfed” by a teacher response. Here the operational principle was to worm our way into the theory presented in this chapter by drawing on a comparable experience. I think this a good strategy—and I’m wondering whether different sorts of texts are more apt for this technique than others. My sense is that the Faigley text is puzzling if it’s your first experience with the idea of distinguishing modernism from postmodernism and if it’s your first go at theories of subjectivity (indeed Carolyn asked for a definition). So the reading may have the effect of either turning people on enormously or confusing people as they wrestle with the concepts. And even though I’m comfortable with this text, I was again struck by the difficulty of bringing this theory into the experiential range—something Michael had commented on in the Blog. So I think Jennifer’s approach was quite sound. Even though our efforts to perfectly match theory with experience were not entirely successful, my sense is that the very acts of trying to come to grips with a teacher- or school-induced subjectivity was very valuable—more so even than producing the perfect “proof.” And probably this exclusive attention to a single text was a good preface to the next job of putting these texts side by side.
Comments about Carolyn’s Review of Good Reasons
from Michael Moghtader
The introduction to Carolyn’s review of Selzer and Faigley’s Good Reasons gave me an idea of how she was foregrounding her perspective as a reviewer: “Good Reasons made me hopeful: finally someone rescues effective argumentation from academia where it normally remains mysteriously lodged, out of reach, irrelevant, and incomprehensible to most students.” Talk about an indictment of English in higher education!
More to the point I want to make, though, such comments say something to me about what Carolyn expected from college textbooks that teachers use to teach argumentative writing to students. She anticipates that these textbooks will be "impractical" to daily life and fail to take into “real consideration . . . modern communication possibilities.” They’ll be “boring, often frustrating, and without intrinsic value” and tend toward the “non-sensical.”
So, by the time I leave Carolyn’s introduction, I learn something about what she wants from an argument text. She wants it to be usable, to be applicable to the everyday arguments we engage in. “Faigley and Selzer,” she says later on Page 2, “help readers work through their own assumptions and opinions, ingraining the notion that students themselves are the source and means of effective arguments.”
The way I’ve characterized Carolyn’s subject positioning as a reviewer is debatable, of course. But it’s important to call attention to the way she situates her "self-as-reviewer" because, I think, the review we get of Good Reasons is not so much a review of the text Selzer and Faigley wrote but of the one that Carolyn desired and, in a way, authorized with her review.
I don’t want my comments to be taken as an evaluation of Carolyn’s review, though. That’s not how I intend them to be used. Instead, I mean to show how the act of reviewing a textbook can often (and easily) be displaced by the act of projecting onto textbooks what we want them to do. I’m not saying that Good Reasons is “better” or “worse” than the way Carolyn reviews it. But I do think that her criteria for evaluating a “good textbook on argument” is deeply informed—as it is for all of us—by larger political beliefs that she has about the Academy—that, specifically, it’s a source of mystification and a place where theory often distances us from learning what we came to school to learn (p. 4).
In short, I admire how thoughtfully Carolyn engaged with Good Reasons. In the same breath, however, I think that the book she’s reviewed isn’t necessarily the one the Selzer and Faigley wrote. “Practicality,” she tells us toward the end of her review, “may be the most appealing aspect of the book.” I’ll buy that—but are we really talking about the same book?
Comments about Sam’s Review of Writing Arguments
from Michael Moghtader
At the beginning, I want to say that, having now read the textbook reviews by Carolyn and Sam, I’m envious of their ability to choose such effective frameworks for their reviews. They make reading a pleasure. They both are, despite the instability of its meaning, good writers.
Sam’s review immediately struck me as visually dense, though the subject headings helped. Still, I could sense how overwhelming it might have been for Sam to review Writing Arguments.
I liked the way Sam initially frames his review and the evaluative approach he uses. He says he’ll evaluate R, B, J’s textbook by how well it, in turn, supports the validity of the rhetorical framework (logos, ethos, and pathos) that the authors privilege. As a teacher, I liked this move—to test the usefulness of an argument textbook by using the argumentative structures it promotes to evaluate it. Nice self-reflexive move!
Sam opens with a central metaphor—that of “ankle support” to help student writers “run” (argue) better than they would without that support. I wasn’t surprised, then, to find that Sam spends a lot time reflecting on how students are likely to respond to this textbook.
At first, I was fine with this. But each time I re-read Sam’s review, I walked away with the same feeling—that it seems more concerned with student response to the textbook than teacher response. Certainly, there are some key moments where he does speak to teacher needs (see para 3, for example). But I’d like to explain why I think Sam, unintentionally, defines teacher needs a bit too narrowly—at least for me.
Consider how Sam opens his review: “As writing teachers, most of us are looking for a textbook that will truly aid us in developing out students’ writing. At least, I am on the lookout for such a text” (para 1). Fair enough. But what’s the “warrant” here? And does it hold? What difference does it make, for example, if I revise Sam’s opening claim to this: Given the various ways one might teach argumentative writing, writing teachers are looking for textbooks that will suit the kinds of learning spaces they may want to cultivate in their classes, the range of curricular approaches that they may want to take, and the kinds of institutional cultures where such courses may be offered. These “teacherly” concerns open up the function of a textbook beyond student need to anticipate the exigencies of institutional work that shape and are shaped by a teacher’s decision to adopt this or that book—decisions that we teachers make well before we meet students in the classroom.
I wondered, for example, if the strong conceptual presence of the rhetorical triangle in Writing Presence might encourage teachers to default to a course structure around logos, ethos, and pathos? Particularly given the otherwise useful way that Sam chooses to structure his review (around these terms), I could readily see how teachers—particularly those whom the authors have in mind (para 3)—might, too, structure a course around these terms so that students write essays that focus on logos for three weeks, ethos for three weeks, etc.
Am I being unreasonable? Maybe. And, besides, does Sam—or any textbook reviewer—really have an obligation to anticipate these sorts of teacher needs? Or can we write-off my objections as the maniacal residue of Michael’s paranoia and cynicism?
Before(!) we answer, consider that for decades (and even today), teachers structured writing courses around the modes of discourse, which inculcated in students and teachers alike an “atomized” knowledge of composition instruction around EDNA (exposition, description, narration, and argument). There are, to this day, popular textbooks that structure readings and writing assignments around these modes. Indeed, for three years, I taught at a university where this approach was endemic. How easily, then, can teachers internalize and circulate institutionally one concept of writing so that we fail to see it as just one.
What I wanted more from Sam’s review—well, from any review—is a critical look into how amenable such a text is given the variety approaches that teachers might (want to) take in a writing class in argument. That is, what kinds of teachers will more likely benefit from such a treatment of argument than other teachers? Will all teachers find the adaptation of the Toulmin-model of argumentation useful and useful in the same way given a variety of institutional settings? This thought crystalized when I read the admiration Sam shows for the readings R,B, and J select (14). Now, I’m not a prude: texts like “Against Our Will” are wildly provocative and can help teachers cultivate energetic discussion. But the readings don’t announce their use in such a way. Teachers must make them do so.
Sam takes a very open stance as a reviewer. He’s careful to explicitly state what he’s looking for in a textbook, and he’s quite frank about what his feelings are as he moves us through his review. And I trust him.
But his openness, ironically, gives me pause and reason to ask Sam to step back—say, in the last several paragraphs—and qualify his reading of Writing Arguments. I want him to be more distrustful of his reading—to ask, for example, if there are some limitations implicit in adopting such a textbook that teachers should be aware of? Articulating what those limitations might be, of course, isn’t easy. But I believe that textbook reviewers need to take into account the range of student writers and teachers who study argumentative writing in a range of institutional settings.
Got home feeling so wired after the 640 meeting tonight. Hearing Jennifer's interviews made me feel the kind of intellectual stimulation that has long been absent in my graduate education.
I'm also taken with what Stephanie's doing. Because of my involvement with all things First-Year Comp, I can't wait for the next installment--and so much so that I went home and got on the web to look up more Garrett stuff.
I found this article Laurie Garrett and Davos: What do journalists really think? on the affair that Stephanie used as a case study to help us understand the possiblities/ramifcations of blogging and argument. (Stephanie, you've probably seen this. I may even be on your handout we received tonight. But I was just so proud of myself for finding it!!)
A couple things. How would this exercise be different if someone from the South Valley had been present?
Also, Jennifer, do you mean that by awkwardly trying to write in an unfamiliar language that we are internalizing or reproducing a myth or stereotype of an other? I thought that we actually became more aware of how these popular myths work into our consciousness. Also, I found the discussion of the difficulty students would have integrating their ideas about what academic writing is without much familiarity with it, just as we all felt uncomfortable trying to piece together a narrative about someone else in someone else's language.
What if instead of trying to write in South Valleyese we had attempted upper class British instead?
I was reviewing my notes from last class and thinking about Sam and Stephanies presentations. While both were successful I thought, I did have quite a bit of discomfort while doing the exercise Sam led, and it deserves more analysis. Susan's entry touches on what was uncomfortable for me. I felt that we could not really do that exercise if we were in the company of someone from that community, or even someone of color or hispanic... it would have been very different. The intentions of such an exercise are good but the reality is absurd in many ways...
The only thing it can possibly do is to reinscribe the existence of stereotypical and cliche information-- which is all someone outside a particular community can have to draw from if he or she has no sustained direct contact with a community or its members-- which are so diverse anyway as to make general characterization always fallacious. While it is a useful exercise in which to empathize with what some students feel like entering into academic discourse, the problematic assumptions outweigh this positive application. We can no more assume what kinds of communication are practiced and what kinds of responses individuals will have to particular discourse than we can try to mimic the "other."
I think fiction writers explore "others" in interesting ways occasionally, but more often they fail for exactly the same reasons we must fail in the exercise-- they just aren't intimate enough, inside enough to pull off a complex, legitimate portrait.
536/640 Homework for Wednesday:
For April 9, we're reading Faigley's Chapter 4 and Zavarzadeh's essay. One thing I would like us to do during part of this class is to put these two texts into conversation. In the process, we'll think more deeply about what they might say to each other and what we have to say to them.
Directions
Before coming to class on the 9th, choose a paragraph from Chapter 4 of Lester Faigley's book and one paragraph from Ma'sud Zavarzadeh's essay. Look for paragraphs that you find particularly interesting, disconcerting, or difficult to understand. Don't worry if the two paragraphs don't appear to have something in common. On a length-wise (horizontal) page, create two columns and type out one paragraph at the top of each column, leaving the bottom half of the sheet blank. Please bring to class SIX copies of this "paragraph paper."
In class, we'll distribute our paragraph papers with our classmates and use them to focus our talk about the readings.
/michael
Continuation of Stephanie: Stephanie’s gambit was more dangerous than Sam’s in that she risked alienating her audience by her extreme negativity. Yet my sense was that she knew her audience well enough and counted on their trusting her that she could begin a conversation knowing that she was safe in taking this risk
. In other words, she had pre-established an ethos for this class that assured us that she listens well and becomes fully engaged in conversations of all sorts—that we don’t have to agree with her. Hence Michael was able to say openly that he was becoming uneasy with what she was saying. But I noted that he did “withhold” a bit. I felt a little uneasy about disagreeing with Stephanie—but I think that is because I’m the teacher and I’m supposed not to impose my preferences. Even so I soon felt that it was ok to point out the problems with thinking of any discipline as somehow separated from politics or social conditions. Had Stephanie not asked specifically for help, I would not have been able to enter the conversation. I noticed that Stephanie’s broader “prompt” had the effect of getting us to look very broadly at the way Faigley puts arguments together (as opposed, say, to talking about his particular politics). Eventually someone, not Stephanie, pointed to a specific passage and then we all dove in to it. I’ve been puzzling over why Stephanie would dislike the double narrative (US politics and composition research and practice), and I think I have an explanation. Maybe it was not that Stephanie objected to Faigley’s painting a political backdrop for comp studies history—but rather that Faigley did not do a good job recognizing the interests of the professional writing/tech writing/business writing community. I think she’s right. Died in the wool compositionists don’t notice this lapse. So this was productive for me personally—very. The conversation remained very open ended. I didn’t get a sense of closure as I did with Sam’s. And this is ok (one is not better than the other---one suggests that we’ve learned what we needed to learn; the other suggests that we need to keep thinking things over.
Continuation of Sam: Sam’s engaged reading prompt invited us to think about class and education, about difference in general, and about differences played out in discourses conventions in particular. We touched on class and language, class and leisure, cultural differences surrounding the appropriateness of self-disclosure, and working class expectations for going to college.
The “contact” point with the Faigley reading was working class expectations (am I right?), yet this contact point was approached through talk rather than foregrounded; no “open your books” directive. It strikes me that the reason we were able to so readily engage is that we gained new insights by responding to the writing prompt. In other words, I don’t think it was writing per se that did the trick. Sam’s prompt asked us to turn an intellectual concept (class and cultural difference) into an EXPERIENCE of class and cultural difference—powerful for people who think of themselves as language experts. I’m thinking, however, that had one of us been a south valley resident or a latino/a or New Mexico native american, the assignment would have taken on an entirely different meaning and the conversation would have played out differently. In such a case we would have had discussants from overlapping discourse communities—academic and south valley, and we could have witnessed the importance of getting marginalized populations into the university to enhance the conversations that take place here. We would have had to stop “othering” the south valley residents, even though we were not “othering” in a mean spirited way. We would perhaps have gotten some uncomfortable flak about our absence of knowledge and our assumptions about what south valley residents are like.
One of the differences between Sam’s and Stephanie’s gambits was that Sam came back at the end of the discussion and took several minutes to make the point he wanted to make, to assure closure. So there was a sense that Sam was the expert (because of that closure device) even though he positioned himself as one of “us” in the classroom by saying that he was as inept at getting into an alternative culture as we felt we were. I found this multiple positioning interesting as I think teachers often negotiate the expert/nonexpert divide. And I think the choices in this case (opening and closing expert, mere discussant in between) worked well.
Sam and Stephanie on Faigley Chapter 2: I think both of approaches were wildly successful in generating engaged conversation—so I’m going to spend my time trying to think through why—about what was at work. For starters, each projected a very passionate ethos and
both opening gambits were quite dramatic. Each prompt called those of us who were playing passive class attendee directly to action: Sam made us write in ways that were challenging and uncomfortable, but it was safe writing because the idea was to have us fail and we all complied! And Stephanie engaged us by dramatizing her own response to the reading, by showing emotion as a reader—and this IS engaging. Had she just performed a critical analysis that shredded Faigley’s arguments, I think she would not have been so successful. Instead she positioned herself as an engaged, rational reader who wanted help in puzzling out why something offended her. Both Sam and Stephanie did rely a good deal on their audience knowledge and on the fact that we who were respondents know a lot about both of them. I’ll explore this line of thinking more in the individual responses just about to be posted.
This evening, I received this E-mail from a very intelligent student in my English 101 class. I'm feeling very conflicted and unsure of how to respond. And I'm thinking also about Mas'ud Zavarzadeh's essay we're reading for Weds.
What would you say to him? And what/how would you say (it)?
I have a few things I would like to say about assignment 2. I guess this
should be coverletter material, but it's too late for that now.
First, some background on my writing. We learned how to write a wide
variety of closed form essay in high-school, starting in ninth grade. By
the time I was a senior, I was writing about one five page paper per week
for my film history or non-fiction English class. We alo did a variety of
creative and experimental writing in history and english classes all
throughout my lovely years at high school. So, to be perfectly honest,
writing a straight-forward closed-form essay about pizza delivery is really
hard for me because I'm bored with that form. If I actually want to
convince somebody of something, than it is a good form.
So when I wrote assignment 2, I sat down and tried to have some fun. I
tried to have a unique voice. I used a lot of alliteration because I like
it that way. I tried to make the reader realize how annoying it is to
deliver pizzas, how hard it is to cope with orange shag carpet and stinky
smells it other people's houses. I wanted to have a the theme of "Zen and
the Art of Pizza Delivery"-if you will- but also to touch on a few other
assorted ideas. I did it on purpose. It was fun. One topic, supported by
three body paragraphs is not interesting to me. I guess I had this
idealistic notion that returning to college would be interesting and
challenging. Freshman UNM classes are not interesting.
I want you to know that I know english 101 has to be this way and I don't
hold it against you. Teaching a class like this must not be easy, yet you
are enthusiastic and motavated none the less.
But what confuses me is that in the margins of my paper, you write down
what my theme is. Than you say I need to state it more clearly. I do not
see why I need to state my theme more clearly if you know what is.
Subtlety is a value of mine which I hold very close. I feel like I was
penalized for this. I do not think that my theme was unclear. I think my
theme was very clear. But my theme was not the only aspect of my paper.
There is other stuff going on in my paper. I think this makes it more
interesting. I did it on purpose.
The last thing I'll say is this: in the years I've been out of school, I
have truly come to see writing as a form of art and expression. It makes
me very, very sad that as an engeneering major I will never have time to
explore this form of art in an academic environment. So I guess I'm trying
to do so in my closed form papers. I'll stop.
Just finished Chapter 4 of Fragments and have to say that I like this writer/educator/theorist very very much.
As a result, I’ve been trying to imagine how I might approach the kind of teaching work I do to engage people in a conversation about subjectivity, subject positions, the post-Cartesian self, etc.
And I'm frustrated by the difficulty I’m experiencing trying to do so!!
For example, I began reflecting on an upcoming assignment for my English 101 students that asks them to study the form of the "op-ed" genre (in the Daily Lobo) and think about how writers situate themselves in relation to a topic and reader--or, rather, how certain topics and the genre itself often constucts a subject position for writers.
But my students aren't getting it and I'm wondering if it's me or the class or my application of the theory.
I remember that we talked briefly at the end of 538 last week about what might constitute “Faigley’s argumentative style,” and I wonder if my difficulty is caused by this style.
Not to imply that we judge him by pragmatic ends, but how “usable” are you finding the knowledge that readers like us form from reading some of these chapters? Or...
Has the theory and classroom practice we've wrestled with this semester filetered into your daily practice?
Since we're talking this week about bourgeois subjects, what do you make of this?
"Graduate-Student.com was created in August 2002 as a resource for fellow graduate students struggling through the day-to-day grind of writing their theses, researching their dissertations, rushing to publish, traveling abroad and seeking conferences to add to their Curriculum Vitaes."
What do you think about this graduate student on-line support page? They hit all the right notes--from questions about the diss to pedagogical issues. But is this cotton-candy graduate student culture? Graduate student culture for dummies?
The disclaimer is telling, as it foregrounds graduate subjectivity as consumers of information, not producers:
"Note (Site disclaimer): This site is not responsible for the content of any links that it provides to external sites and does not aim to harm anyone via its content. It merely exists as an informational repository - a primary portal for graduate students to find information relevant to their educatinal lives" (italics mine).
An as(n)ide:
The posing students on each page look like the GAP is very popular among graduate students.
ok...this might only be funny for me, but here it is.
I was looking through my search strings for all of the blogs I run off of answergrape.com. For the month of april, these are the top 5 search strings that people have used to come to any of my blogs:
1 1 12.50% albuquerque isotopes.com (I own an isotopes URL)
2 1 12.50% assignments and imbedded reporters
3 1 12.50% comptheory blog
4 1 12.50% importance of media
5 1 12.50% laurie garrett letter davos
6 1 12.50% laurie garrett letter from davos
7 1 12.50% michael moghtader
8 1 12.50% oxfam waste
Someone's googling you, Michael!
Take this online quiz to determine the philosopher who best suits your personal views.
Try not to be stunned but I favor Nietzsche, Aristotle, and Hume, in that order. Oddly, this quiz helped me clarify their respective views.
'Yo, can u plz help me write English?
Interesting article in USA Today bemoaning Internet chat language. (vis-a-vis Faigley...)