Oct 31, 2015

From "Politics of Composing" to "Politics of Change" (Repeat Post from 10/28)

Folks,

'Lest you think I am insane for asking you why a concept such as "writer" necessarily needs to be singular, I'll encourage you to keep thinking about our politics of "traditional" vs. "multimodal" composing for next week. Maybe the answer is simple: composing involves working with more signs/symbols/materials beyond words, while writing involves only working with words. Maybe not.

Since we have no trouble imagining -- or acknowledging -- the expansion of concepts like genre, text, mode, or medium to account for multimodality; and since some of our theorists see "composing" and "writing" as conflatable, rather than as hierarchical categorizations of one another; then what stops us from opening up other terms, like "writer"? What other cultural logics or politics might be at work (western or non-western) that make it okay to expand our notions of the materials and objects of communication, but not our notions of the communicators or of the goals of communication -- of people, of origin points, of ownership or ideas?

We have no trouble discussing multimodal texts in terms of quality and value and message and impact. We have no trouble theorizing them as emergent (old/new and new/old at the same time), and somewhat socially determined. We are aware of the difficulties in producing them and of accessing them. And we are even smart enough to know that technological utopianism may not be an inscribed reality for everyone everywhere.

Yet, there are still aspects of writing or reading or writer (in its biggest, broadest sense) that are untouchable for one reason or another, or that we didn't -- as a class -- want to discuss. But I think we should. Who is the "writer" of Doreen Piano's "Writing the Ruins", for example? Who "authored" Patrick Claire's "Anatomy of a Virus"? What makes Maira Kalman's blog "her writing"?

For that matter, was William Burroughs the "inventor" of his own technique? When we think about them through the lens of multimodality, we may need to categorize them further, or perhaps to challenge their definitions altogether.

Questions like these are "contact zones" in the sense that those are the places we can go to figure out What's really at stake in this for us?. Ownership? Fame? Capital? There's always something at stake for theorists, and there are always ideologies at stake for other people we know (i.e., family members, taxpayers, friends at other institutions, etc.) who are exercising their own judgment about what we do, whether it is valuable, whether it fits with their definition of "learning" or "school" or "writing" or "scholarship" or "social activism" or "public intellectualism" or "work" or "equity" or "language" or "deep attention," etc.

Those disruptures are the places I'd like you to look for the narrower version of your final question. All of your interestingly motivated broader questions could be narrowed in this way to arrive at a set of non/negotiables. Next week, I'll ask you to share in class that more manageable version of your question. And we'll talk about the critical essay, differentiate it somewhat from the personal essay, talk through logistics of the final assignment, and workshop the little bit of craft on multivocality that I keep promising you.

And all of this will happen after our final colloquium!

On that note, to prepare for next week's colloquium on "Politics of Change," this is how I'd like to excerpt our texts:
  • We'll all read Berlin's "English Studies, Work, and Politics" in its entirety
  • Then read either Redd's "Tryin' to Make a Dolla' Outa Fifteen Cent" or Ohmann's "Literacy, Technology, and Monopoly Capital" 
  • (Of course, you are always welcome and encouraged to read all three texts.)

As you read, please note two things:
  1. similarities to Adam Banks's arguments about "access" from several weeks back
  2. how your chosen selection (Redd or Ohmann) either supports or works against Berlin's argument that English studies is the place to critique political and cultural (and capital) involvements.

Have a great week, and send any questions my way before then!
-Prof. Graban

Oct 30, 2015

TIRP 5 Individual Reflection - Composition and Design

Composition and Design

The definition of the world 'composition', at least for me, carries with it connotations of a lone artist working to create something new. Prior to this assignment, I had never composed collaboratively with other people in the same space before, and so beginning the work, I was wary of what that process would like in actuality. Our project was a combined literacy and multiculturalism narrative, composed in Google docs. Each of us wrote about how experiences and background in either narrative, and then combined those individual composition to create one, cohesive narrative that was reflective of us all. As we worked, I experienced a process --  and a new literacy -- that has changed the way I view and approach composition and the significance of composing text.

What really surprised me about our project is how design and the visual became such important aspects of it. As I've said before, it was written in Google doc, which bears many similarities to a normal word processor, and has all the commonplaces that one would expect in modern typing software. With that, the visual face of a word document, such as Microsoft Word or a Google Doc, is totally in line with the cultural expectations for what such a piece of composition should look like.  As Diana George states, visual design is very much tied up with cultural assumptions about what the visual is and should do. Just as with text, each discourse community has its own commonplaces and conventions as to what the visual can and should accomplish. In the space of a google doc, and in a genre that isn't inherently specific to the visual, we were unclear on how the visual would manifest itself in our work -- or rather, how we could compose visually in a space that is primarily meant for composing text. The results, however, came totally naturally out of our process, and emerged organically from the space we were composing in.

This process of designing visually was a literacy journey in and of itself. For us, the composing the visual came out of composing the text. The first of our main design components was having a different color text for each author. This was initially done out of convenience; as a means to denote who had written who so that we didn't mix anything up. However, it soon became symbolic of what we were trying to accomplish through the project. As we spliced the individual essays into one, unified narrative, the  different colored text illustrated the collaborative nature of the process, in a way that was immediately noticeable even without reading the piece itself. As we composed text to tell our individual and collective stories, we were simultaneously composing visually in way that compounded and complemented what we were doing.

Likewise, we eliminated the divisions the document, so that there were no specific pages. The result is a one long, uninterrupted document that carries the entire narrative. In unifying the entire thing, this effect visually mirrored our intention for the project, which was to weave together disparate narratives into one, cohesive story.

This process of composing visually evokes Yancey's discussion of the content of composition, in her Key Note Address, "Made Note Only In Words: Composition in a New Key." In the following passage, she states that the process of composing is inherantly multi-modal, and combines numerous genres and conventions together in a way that contributes to meaning:

"We inhabit a model of communication practices incorporating multiple genres related to each other, those multiple genres re-mediated across contexts of time and space, linked one to the next, circulating across and around rhetorical situations both inside and outside school."

Yancey herself starts her speech by commenting on how the presentation she's giving is multi-modal and visual; it features two PowerPoints operating concurrently, there's a lone spotlight lighting her onstage, and microphones projecting her voice into the audience. In this sense, Yancey has combined multiple modalities (Visual, text, and oral communication) into one cohesive narrative, in a way that each of the modalities embody a piece of the message. If we examine this through the lens of Marshall McLuhan's statement "The medium is the message", then the power that is inherent in these specific forms to affect content is amplified tremendously. 

The power of medium to effect intent became a real experience for me through this project. The visual aspects of our project (the multi-colored text and our lack of page divisions) changed the way I read my own words, and the words of my collaborators. The simple act of changing a text's color did just as much to affect meaning as our composing of the text. In this way, we participated in the same multi-modality that Diana George and Kathleen Yancey talk about. In this respect, multi-modality itself is just as collaborative a process as our project.

Togetherness: It's Not Just An HBO Show




While our group did the assignment somewhat wrong, we still did manage to grapple with multimodal issues through the discussion of our separate stories. We didn’t communicate much about the assignment and created our own stories separately but we were still influenced by each other when we first started the assignment and looked towards Sam, who was the first person to post his story. In a way, both me and Emma were influenced by Sam. In that way, all three of our stories became coming of age stories as we graduated high school and matured into adulthood and what that means. 

In a lot of ways, the use of Google Drive made our assignment both more personal and more impersonal. Google Drive allowed us to communicate with each other without actually being in person but it also took away more of the personal nature of the collaboration. The ideas that we typed into the Google doc were ideas that came purely from us and were untainted by a group setting. It’s natural that people might say different ideas when they’re by themselves in comparison to when they’re in a group setting. In a way, this is intuitive towards teamwork as it allows us to present our unfiltered selves. In a way, the way we created our narratives has prevented smaller, more human errors, such as being embarrassed or being swayed by other ideas. As Delagrange said in chapter one of her book, “These heroic accounts of technological change thus become part of a “grand narrative” of uninterrupted progress that obscures smaller and more local narratives that may not be so unrelievedly positive.” As technology has advanced, we’ve moved past smaller more human error and have gotten more to the meat of ideas, which is what happened here. Instead of potentially being distracted in a physical meeting or possibly missing the point, we had our own pure idea of the assignment and allowed our own ideas to build off each other and come together for the assignment.

Collaboration Seems Frustrating When You Don't Drop the Ball

Collaborative sounds like an easy task, until you actually have to do it. You don’t realize that you have to take into account other people’s opinion, other’s motives for writing, and you have to account for everyone schedule too. It’s hard. And my group dropped the ball this week. Between our misunderstanding for the assignment and our hectic schedule our “collaboration” was tougher than I think we anticipated.  
We used Google Docs as our method of choice because it was most familiar and easiest to use and we settled on telling a coming-of-age tale because it was the first suggestion made and we all uploaded our stories individually. Instead of having a collaboration with our similar stories intertwining with one another we used each other’s stories and writing techniques to craft our coming-of-age tales.
I, myself, did not a have a comprehensive knowledge of all the tools the Google Docs had to offer, like being able to see all of the revision history and different authors using different colors. After seeing what other groups had done and how the used Google Docs and all of its advantages I can see how collaborative writing can be a good thing and how it can help to produce a good piece of work. I know that if I were to do this again, I would understand the tools we have better and be able to use them to my advantage.
As I say in other groups there is a downside to collaboration that my group did not face. It can lead to a decent amount of frustration too. I know that one group shared their frustration when it came to editing their essay and determining who had the final say in what was okay to include in the final piece. “Any collaborative writing endeavor promises a representative articulation, a compromise of voices and points of view: eventually.” (Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy, Explanation in Process).
This process reminded me a little of Hood’s Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy. Even though this not Wikipedia, it is still a collaborative effort to instill a certain knowledge to an audience.  Similar to Wikipedia you have multiple authors trying to get a certain point out and sometimes those thought processes do not mesh and what one author finds important may not be important to another which can lead to taking out phrases and sections which can lead to frustration between authors or editors. This is the biggest con when it comes to collaborative writing that I saw.

I think if we had understood our assignment better we would have been able to sympathize with the struggles that other groups seemed to face. I think that collaborative work would be a fun and useful tool for leisure, but when it comes to an assignment it’s more of a hassle than anything, especial when you drop the ball.  

The Burden of Togetherness

Working with a group is not something I do well. I understand it is an important life skill to learn, but I do not like when it is forced upon me. I work better alone, that way no one drags me down, and I do not drag anyone down. So, when faced with the assignment to work together on a multimidal composing platform, I cringed inside. This was not the time to force me to work with others. It was hitting the stride in the semester when teachers are gearing up for final projects and essays and smongst all that is hte usual course load, so having to shove group coordination in the middle is a nightmare. Add to that the Google Docs stubborn desire to not let me access the document and we have a recipe for destruction. I felt horrible that I could not contribute as much as soon or the way I wanted, because I am usually the person who has their stuff together in groups and I always loathed that member who could not get it together until the last minute, but there was too much life going on.

Collaborative composing is something that works best in a casual setting. I have done it with friends before and it was a good way to imrpove both of our writing, hoewever it is something should never be forced on a group, especially not when coupled with having to use a totally new form of composing. It is one thing if the group is too busy, or does not gel the right way to compose collaboratively, but add to that having to access a totally new form of composition and you have a toxic swill of potential unpreparedness. I think that collaborative composisng, as seen in the meta texting done in Yancey's keynote address "Made Not Only In Words," can work very well and even enhance a piece, but only if all participants have the room and the mindest to complete such a task.

The assignment to collaboratively compose multimodally certainly showed me the pros and cons of bringing multimodality into the classroom, but I think assignments like this are an important first step to fully incorporating multimodality.

Not For Everyone

When I found out that the first part of TIRP 5 was a group effort I couldn’t help but sigh. And once we began working on it, I couldn’t help but sigh more. Collaborating on work has never been a strong suit of mine mainly just because it is so much easier to work alone. Also you have to take into consideration other people’s ideas even if they conflict with your own. It didn’t help that we all had different schedules that just weren’t working for getting things done without someone taking on a majority of the work. As someone who gets things done at the last second, this made me the burden in the group and I’d rather have not had to waste other people’s time as well as affect their grade. This conflict illuminated the purpose of Hoods’ article Editing Out Obscenity. If only every group had a moderator like Wikipedia does. I was also using Google Docs for the first time which made me a weak link that hindered the group because it took me forever to figure things out and even now I am not confident in my abilities with the program enough to really use it on a daily basis.
When it came to using Google Docs as a way of collaborating I don’t think it was very effective. I think the lack of effectiveness came from a lack of personal interaction. We were unable to organically express what we expected of each other and the technological medium was the cause. Because we were unable to have an organic interaction we got lost in what we were supposed to do after already not being sure of what we supposed to be doing. Also what failed at this being a true collaborative effort is that in writing our own narratives it gave us no incentive to interact with the each other especially because it was all online. Our groups’ first instinct was to try and meet in person for this project because that is what is natural. When we couldn’t meet we figured yeah, Google Docs should get us where we need to be, but it only seemed to make it more difficult due to the lack of direct communication. Some people communicate more effectively in person and none of our reading seem to address this.
Because we needed to eventually present our work, I know I wrote in a way that was slightly different from my private voice. I am much more open about my thoughts and can be more confrontational when writing for only a professor. Not knowing how others feel and not knowing how others would react I often censor myself when writing knowing I am writing for an audience. Unlike what Miller and Shepherd had to say, I am not one wot write in an effort to write as a call of action to others. In fact I would much rather no one read what I have to write, which complicates what they’ve said because it conflicts with my own beliefs. I also feel that the internet is such an insidious place that even if someone were to blog exactly how they feel they would be torn apart by an unforgiving audience. Being sensitive to criticism, blogging does not appeal to me.

            While multimodality comes out of a need, it is not a need from everyone. I could go the rest of my life without reading or posting a blog and I know I’d be just fine. I’d also much rather sit down with group members in Strozier than working through technology. When working with people abroad or in another state Google Docs would be fantastic, but if my classmate with two hours of free time on their hands, I expect to be working in proximity so that we can have a much more organic conversation that I believe leads to better quality work. 

The Influence of Change in Writing

 
From the collaborative project, to write a text in a multimodal environment, I could see many aspects of the various articles read. I took from the collaborative project a deeper understanding into the idea of the writing process and the ease of using a new technology. I also was able to see a design concept emerge from the activity. While I did see these attributes I was not able to see the role of hyper attention or even deep attention during the task.
            For our project we wrote with different topics but built on the foundation of language. Piecing together our works gave us the ability to look not only at other’s writing process but see our writing process as it converged. In Hood’s Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy she mentions that while working on a Wikipedia page students can see the writing process; the formation from “ ‘shitty first drafts’ in the process [to] becoming ‘fine’ ” and the development that goes into it”. Working in a group to write the essay showed me more of the revision process that is talked about in writing. Personally when I write there isn’t an in-depth revision, but more of a surface level thing. With the added difficulty of making a cohesive paper the revision went more deeply into the text accounting for more than just grammar.
            I could see why the Google document application can garner more attention. In Technologies of Wonder by Susan Delagrange she reiterates the idea that “old practices and values are often mapped onto the new media that seek to replace them”(8). Technology is a cycle of the same thing just in an advanced form. I can see that idea in the Google document. It works mostly the same as the original word processor that has been around for some time now. Noticing this I realized Delagrange’s idea that “new literacy (and other) technologies will only gain acceptance if it can be demonstrated that they replicate the same values and principles as the technology they supersede” (5). The Google document itself is an expansion of a word processor.
            The use of a Google document was very interesting. One thing Diana George mentions in her article From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing is the importance of design in visual renderings; “ design [has] [a] relation to meaning (777). She points to design as another way to communicate what a piece is trying to convey. In our project we used different colors for each person’s personal point of view, however the text was not separated but presented as a whole. From this design decision we portrayed a collectivity but also an individuality. And as it was a class assignment we stuck with what George would call the basic design for serious work (778). This is a great representation to our audience of how we perceived our project.
            When I was working on the project I was looking for the roles of deep and hyper attention Katherine Hayles refers to in her paper Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes. More than anything I was looking for the hyper attention, since Hayles states that Generation M is starting to be taken over in media and we would be the kids of the study fully enthralled in it (195). However, what would show hyper attention-“switching focus rapidly among different tasks”- in this project were not characterized (187). The different capabilities of the Google document were not utilized. We stuck to the bare minimum our attention heavily on what we were writing. On the other hand I don’t think the full potential of deep attention was reached on this assignment either. Hayles defines deep attention as “concentrating on a single object for long periods, ignoring outside stimuli while engaged” (187). There was no real need of analysis or to look deeper into our work, because it was all in all a more opinionated piece. Once our objective was over so was our attention, which in turn happened pretty quickly. From this I’m wondering is Hayles left out a middle attention, something that floats between the two but is neither.

            While using the Google document I can see the rise of importance of media and multimodal outlets all of these theorists call for. On the other hand though I do not think everyone, even those fully immersed in technology since their birth will rely heavily on these aspects of new technology. In George’s piece she states an interesting fact, that we’ve always used visual, sometimes more sometimes less but its always been there. And I see the same in multimodal environments; there will be those who are immersed in it and those who occasionally touch it.

Multimodal Composition; The QuestionsThat Modern Composition Scholars Face

For this assignment we were asked to take first-hand experience on what it means to compose in a multimodal format. We were asked to do so in groups of three people to see how effective this was for collaboratively composing. Our group chose to compose narratives about our personal intellectual coming of age. We did so by using Google drive as our primary mode of composition.
            Overall I found this method to be fairly ineffective in it’s incentive for collaboration, as my group dropped the ball with our lack of collaboration. This wasn’t Google Drive’s fault; rather it was our own misinterpretation of our assignment. However, Google drive did prompt some form of cohesiveness throughout our project.
Since our group wrote independent narratives, the effect of writing on a shared mode of composing (Google Drive) prompted us to read each other’s short essays. What we concluded was that we all wrote about a similar theme after reading each other’s essays. After this first exploration of “collaborative” composing on a shared e-forum, I found that this style of collaboration has many pros and cons.
The pros; Google Drive made for any easy to write, Microsoft Word styled format. You can track your revisions with hardly any effort and it is very easy to edit. That is a major advantage for collaborative composition as you can easily edit others or reverse others edits that you don’t approve of. The cons. Virtually composing lead to several communication gaps, which inevitably led to our collaborative demise. Communicating virtually isn’t entirely reliable as you are never sure when the other person may have time to respond. When you couple that with the impending due date of an assignment it causes people, as it did our group, to rush over directives to ensure the assignment is completed on time.  I feel like w also didn’t oppose to anybody else’s ideas and I fear that we may have conceded in sense to ideas that we may have been able to more effectively voice our concerns over in person.
            All in all, I found this to be a pioneering mode of composing and I feel that in society or at least in the world of academia, we will begin composing in these new virtual modes more often. As Susan Delagrange opens on the first page in her intentionally ironic e-novel Technologies of Wonder: Rhetorical Practice in Digital World, “We stand at a unique moment of convergence in the humanities, when scholars in Digital Media Studies have the expertise and the opportunity to set the tone to influence the direction of digital standards and practices for years to come.” What an exciting moment in composition that this makes for.
Carolyn R. Miller and Dawn Shepard wrote an essay called Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog, where they analyze blogging as a genre. They don’t question much of whether or not the blog itself is functioning as it’s own genre; rather they assume the blog a genre and answer questions upon that assumption. That action alone functions as a milestone in composition scholarship. This is because by now assuming blog as a genre, we no longer question the validity, impact or relevance of these forms of composing. The have their own styles, standards, formal features and serve a pragmatic action. For blogs specifically, Miller and Shepard state, “Self-expression is a salient theme among some bloggers.”(Pg. 9). This shows how multifaceted these new genres are, because clearly blogs have other social actions and pragmatic actions. For example, they serve as an educational tool, because I am blogging right now in collegiate level curriculum.
This raises a simple question. How long can we deny these methods from common pedagogical approaches? Obviously some professors have incorporated new forms of multimodal composing but unfortunately this still seems to be a pioneering form of pedagogy. When computers were invented and deemed practical in most senses, it be came inevitable that society would use them to compose with. As a result, we integrated our school systems with computers and software in the hopes of improving education. Now we have furthered that progression by creating newer forms of composing. Forms that scholars like Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepard say that we cannot even deny as independent genres anymore. Yet, institutions and most of academia are slow in their acceptance of these new genres into their curriculum. 
For example, as illogical as it sounds, for the sake of making a point, say the genre of essay writing was just introduced into the world of composing. Essay writing serves a clear pragmatic purpose and needs to be taught. So we invented classes for that. We have essay and article technique classes, yet we offer very little for multimodal composing, or blogging. Essay writing is a phenomenal skill to possess because it shows informative and defined points. It helps people say what they want to say in a clear, cohesive manner. That being said, is virtual and multimodal composition not just as relevant and impactful in modern society? On page four of Blogging as a Social Action, Miller and Shepard quote Calvert's notion of voyeurism. A term which Calvert defines as "the consumption of revealing images for purposes of entertainment -- , through the means of the mass media and the internet".
This serves as ammunition for two points I would like to present in context to one another. The first point being that the majority of American citizens have some form of internet access and the second point being that it is often used for entertainment. Those two things being said; Does multimodal composition open the door to a never before breached realm of scholarship? That realm of scholarship being the ability to make it appealing to people outside of academia. Any attempt to make education more fun or interesting should be pounced on as quickly as possible. If these forms of composition can be more interesting to people, yet equally informative, then we need to integrate them into our curriculum as quickly as possible. 
As Katherine Hayles writes about in her essay Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes, there is a cognitive difference evolving in attention spans and multi-tasking in society. She hypothesizes in her introduction, "that we are in the midst of a generational shift in cognitive styles that poses challenges to education at all levels, including colleges and universities." She claims that younger generations require more stimuli to stay engaged and excel in multi-tasking, over deeper, more analytical thinking. If there's a chance that multimodal composition could bridge that gap by offering multiple stimuli to the reader, then how long can we deny it from our pedagogical approaches? 
These multimodal composing methods are now more relevant than traditional forms of compositing and we now must decide how we choose to accept that. Do we alienate them from scholarship and accept them as a more social form of composition, or do we incorporate them into scholarship? If there is anything we can draw from the research of other scholars into this matter, it is that the movement of multimodal composing is inevitable. We must now choose to accept or deny it.

Oct 28, 2015

Finding Contact Zones in "Politics of Composing" (and other Places) -- Looking Ahead to "Politics of Change"

Folks,

'Lest you think I am insane for asking you why a concept such as "writer" necessarily needs to be singular, I'll encourage you to keep thinking about our politics of "traditional" vs. "multimodal" composing for next week. Maybe the answer is simple: composing involves working with more signs/symbols/materials beyond words, while writing involves only working with words. Maybe not.

Since we have no trouble imagining -- or acknowledging -- the expansion of concepts like genre, text, mode, or medium to account for multimodality; and since some of our theorists see "composing" and "writing" as conflatable, rather than as hierarchical categorizations of one another; then what stops us from opening up other terms, like "writer"? What other cultural logics or politics might be at work (western or non-western) that make it okay to expand our notions of the materials and objects of communication, but not our notions of the communicators or of the goals of communication -- of people, of origin points, of ownership or ideas?

We have no trouble discussing multimodal texts in terms of quality and value and message and impact. We have no trouble theorizing them as emergent (old/new and new/old at the same time), and somewhat socially determined. We are aware of the difficulties in producing them and of accessing them. And we are even smart enough to know that technological utopianism may not be an inscribed reality for everyone everywhere.

Yet, there are still aspects of writing or reading or writer (in its biggest, broadest sense) that are untouchable for one reason or another, or that we didn't -- as a class -- want to discuss. But I think we should. Who is the "writer" of Doreen Piano's "Writing the Ruins", for example? Who "authored" Patrick Claire's "Anatomy of a Virus"? What makes Maira Kalman's blog "her writing"?

For that matter, was William Burroughs the "inventor" of his own technique? When we think about them through the lens of multimodality, we may need to categorize them further, or perhaps to challenge their definitions altogether.

Questions like these are "contact zones" in the sense that those are the places we can go to figure out What's really at stake in this for us?. Ownership? Fame? Capital? There's always something at stake for theorists, and there are always ideologies at stake for other people we know (i.e., family members, taxpayers, friends at other institutions, etc.) who are exercising their own judgment about what we do, whether it is valuable, whether it fits with their definition of "learning" or "school" or "writing" or "scholarship" or "social activism" or "public intellectualism" or "work" or "equity" or "language" or "deep attention," etc.

Those disruptures are the places I'd like you to look for the narrower version of your final question. All of your interestingly motivated broader questions could be narrowed in this way to arrive at a set of non/negotiables. Next week, I'll ask you to share in class that more manageable version of your question. And we'll talk about the critical essay, differentiate it somewhat from the personal essay, talk through logistics of the final assignment, and workshop the little bit of craft on multivocality that I keep promising you.

And all of this will happen after our final colloquium!

On that note, to prepare for next week's colloquium on "Politics of Change," this is how I'd like to excerpt our texts:
  • We'll all read Berlin's "English Studies, Work, and Politics" in its entirety
  • Then read either Redd's "Tryin' to Make a Dolla' Outa Fifteen Cent" or Ohmann's "Literacy, Technology, and Monopoly Capital" 
  • (Of course, you are always welcome and encouraged to read all three texts.)

As you read, please note two things:
  1. similarities to Adam Banks's arguments about "access" from several weeks back
  2. how your chosen selection (Redd or Ohmann) either supports or works against Berlin's argument that English studies is the place to critique political and cultural (and capital) involvements.

Have a great week, and send any questions my way before then!
-Prof. Graban

Oct 22, 2015

Politics of Composing (Part II)

Dear All,

After last night's colloquium and our work tracing binaries through George's and Miller/Shepherd's essays, I realize I forgot to mention this one: process/product. In a way, that binary undergirds most discussions of what a writing class should be and do.

Also, in response to some of your questions about blogging (i.e., What is blogging really and what are some of the reasons for it?), here is a somewhat random assortment of blogs maintained by folks in the early, middle, and/or late stages of their academic careers, and all reflecting some combination of expressivist/constructivist ideals in terms of audience and aim:

For next week, we are reading:
  • Yancey's "Made Not Only in Words" -- (Cross-Talk) everyone reads pp. 791-93, plus either quartet 3 or quartets 1, 2, & 4 (of course, you are always encouraged to just read the whole essay)
  • Delagrange's "Reading Pictures, Seeing Words" -- which is chapter 1 of her online book
  • Hayles' "Deep Attention and Hyperattention" (CL in full)

Here are some of the questions generated after the colloquium that we will continue to apply to Yancey and Delagrange next week:
  • What are they (not) pushing the boundaries of?
  • What's being complicated through these particular visual or online forms?
  • If we could consult only their readings for a definition of "multimodality," how would we define it?
  • In their discussions of visual literacy and/or multimodal composing, what becomes of our ideas of reading, writing, text, audience, value, quality, and standards?

And a question we'll take up with Hayles next week:
  • What is she providing us -- in terms of history building or theory building -- that Diana George did not in her essay on "Design"? 

Obviously, these questions are asking us to read for more than basic comprehension. They are also asking us to read for more than just a summary of their arguments. Of course I want you to read for both those things, but I also ask you to keep track of these questions as you read each text. We should expect that most of them will argue for how their various modalities (blogs, wiki spaces, and multimedia) value the writing process as a respectable and long period of negotiation with images and words. But we should also expect that their arguments will diverge from one another (possibly even contradict one another), even if they seem similar on the surface.

Finally, as you read for next week, please keep in mind where we will go (or have started to look) for definitions of our key terms:
  • Composition (George, Yancey)
  • Design (Delagrange, George, Yancey)
  • Genre (Miller/Shepherd)
  • Hyper vs. Deep (Hayles)
  • Intertextuality
  • Mode (Delagrange)
  • Pedagogy (Hood)
  • Visual Literacy (George)

We'll spend some time defining these terms, after your working group has shared the results of TiRP 5.

Enjoy!
-Prof. Graban

Oct 18, 2015

(Repeat Post) Politics of Composing: "Traditional" vs. Multimodal

Dear All,

Here is how I'd like to divvy up next week's reading among the class:
  • We will all read George's "From Analysis to Design" (in Cross-Talk) and Hood's "Editing Out Obscenity"
  • I'll invite you to read Miller and Shepherd's "Blogging as Social Action" in segments, according to your interests.
    • Interested in the origins of blogging? Read pp. 1-6, 11-14
    • Interested in blogging as a social or cultural phenomenon? Read pp. 1-6, 9-10, 14-15
    • Interested in blogging as a(n art) form? Read pp. 1-9

I'm going to make Ridolfo and Rife's "Rhetorical Velocity" optional. It's a cool case study, and I highly encourage you to check it out as a potential source for your final critical essay. But, I think we'll have enough frameworks to contend with by using just these first three articles.

There is no TiRP due with this reading, so I suggest taking it in stages rather than tackling it all at once. You will likely see some explicit overlap between Hood and Miller/Shepherd, and we will work together in class next week to consider how George's advocating for design might actually support the other two projects, even if she offers a different perspective on the visual and on composing.

Also, here are some key terms for your syllabus to guide our next couple of weeks:
  • Composition
  • Design
  • Genre
  • Intertextuality
  • Mode
  • Multimodality
  • Pedagogy 
  • Visual Literacy

Finally, by the end of the day TOMORROW (10/19/15), remember to send me an e-mail message -- a paragraph or so in length -- in which you articulate your idea for the final critical essay in as much detail as you can manage at this point, including your research question or dilemma (a.k.a. "contact zone"), tentative sources, and other ideas.

Enjoy!
-Prof. G

Oct 16, 2015

Reflection on TiRP 4

Although I was unable to attend class this week, it is my understanding that you took the pieces assigned for reading and were able to build a new theory with them. By unpacking these pieces, you shed new light on the subject of equity and were able to use each piece of writing as a building block for understanding the concepts more clearly.

In my original analysis of equity, I traced its meaning through Anzaldúa’s essay, How to Tame a Wild Tongue. I used her idea of voice and the idea not feeling like she fit in among her peers in school because of language she spoke and the dialect that she spoke with depending on she was speaking to. ESL in the classroom and the conflicts that arise from those situations were issue that I noted from guidelines from the CCCC and NCTE websites.  In my analysis I talked about how the school system emphasizes the importance of other languages, but only in those specified classes. There is no room for another language in an English class for example. An individual’s voice is shut down on the classroom of it is not the norm.

However, I learned from you that there was a new realization from that piece that helps shed a greater light on ESL and the individual voice in the classroom. As you unpacked the essay’s you were able to see that voice is a combination of conforming and resisting, not simply conforming to the school agenda. This was not something I was able to see in my individual work.  

After talking it out with a few people, I was able to see how you came to that conclusion. As individuals we pick and choose what influence our voices. We make the choice (consciously or not) about how what social rules we went to take on and what social roles we want to abandon. I see this now in Anzaldúa’s essay when she talks about the different Chicanos from various regions that she interacts with and how her dialect is the same or varies from them.  I think this is an important concept to see and to understand in the classroom because when a teacher understands a student’s voice is not something that can simply conform to their norms it allows for a greater chance to learn. It allows for the student to have a better education. 

Recourse

In the first part of my TIRP, I began to explore how discourse communities, and our notions of voice and identity complicate the way we look at and treat equity. Through the lens of Anzaldua, Baldwin, Royster, the CCCC and NCTE, I examined how our idea of equity resonates within the concepts of language and identity discourse, coming to same conclusion for both: that in order ensure equity, we must be learn -- as Royster puts it -- to find value in subjectivity, and treat the great plurality within language and identity groups as worthy in and of itself. We must not act as though the overarching "communal identity" that Baldwin writes about is value neutral, or the itself the standard, but rather, one of many legitimate, subjective viewpoints that constitute our lives. Only then, when this respect is in place, can we navigate contact zones in a way that is not inequitable, but rather creates understanding, and forwards and fosters equity in a variety of different ways.

While I fully stand by this initial assertion, in light of our most recent conversation, I would like to make some changes to my argument for the sake of clarification and complexity. First, the most immediate thing that struck me after our conversation is how naturally these arguments which I used for language and identity can and should extend themselves to a discussion of grammar. The assertion that we came to, after examining Hartwell's essay "Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar", is that grammar is experiential, and that is learned based on its relevance to our daily lives. We learn, and take advantage of grammars that offer the highest level of utility, and that utility is dependent on what we are trying to accomplish through our use of that grammar. The same thing is true of language. When I wrote the initial piece, in my mind, I thought of language as something that was almost totally innate; a "second skin" as Gloria Anzaldua describes it in her essay, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue". There are few things that seem to be more intimately tied to the experience of a human being, but the implication from Anzaldua's essay is ultimately that these experiences are largely bought into and learned. You can gain or lose a language depending on proximity and closeness. For example, in her piece, Anzaldua talks about her love of the Pachuco language, but laments that she lost her ability to speak it due to a lack of use in her daily experience. If language is truly innate, one should not be able to lose it as though it were a skill -- like playing the piano or violin. However, Anzaldua does, and the dilemma at the heart of her entire essay centers around her struggle to claim any one of the languages she describes as essential to her sense of Chicana identity. Instead, they are all necessary, yet not entirely fulfilling, parts of herself that are experiential in nature. In the same set that grammar is defined by its utility, the relevance of language -- and how closely tied it is to our experiences -- is what really gives it meaning. The following passage from Anzaldua's essay illustrates this issue:

“My “home” tongues are the languages I speak with my sister and brothers, with my friends… From school, the media and job situations, I’ve picked up standard and working class English. From Mamagrande Locha, I’ve picked up Standard Spanish and Standard Mexican Spanish…From my parents and Chicanos living in the Valley, I picked up Chicano Texas Spanish, and I speak it with my mom, younger brother, aunts, and older relatives. With Chicanas form Nuevo Mexico or Arizona I will speak Chicano Spanish a little…With most California Chicanas I speak entirely in English.

Each one of these is learned experience that makes up how she views herself as a Chicana. When she's with a certain group, she behaves differently then how she would otherwise, and attempts to adopt the convention and commonplaces of that discourse community. However, her strife comes from the fact that she cannot do this with equal success and satisfaction, partially because, when she speaks, in addition to a new language, she is adopting an entire ideology that is present within the confines of that language. Within that ideology is a set of expectations, conventions, and commonplaces that transform what it means to be a Chicana woman -- and are unique to that specific experience, which is liminal yet different.

In the light of this conversation, the notion of equity resonates insofar that these different experiences tied to language and grammar do not provide equal access in all situations. Going back to Anzaldua's essay, she speaks different languages in different contexts in order to attain a different result, or gain access to a different world. The simple problem is that not all of these are as effective in this respect. As an academic, Anzaldua would, in all likelihood, find it much harder to gain access to that discourse community through Tex-Mex Spanish than she would through her use of "standard" English. They simply do not perform the same function. The remedy to this inequity is somewhat proposed in the CCCC's article, "Students' Right To Their Own Language", which makes the assertion that our interaction with language is largely societal and cultural. There is no way to declare that one form of a language is the right form (this goes back the danger that Baldwin posits of the "communal identity" being thought of as the neutral, valueless standard.). That way, when we let students express their home tongues in academic setting, we are creating equity in that we are giving access to an experience where otherwise there may have been none, and destroying the inequitable hierarchy that declares one form of experience superior (or inferior) to another. In doing so, we create a liminal space; a contact zone that promotes equity, and equity within difference.


Stop Making Sense: Issues With Language and Grammar in Multiculturalism

The ideas within my analysis did resonate with others, as other people within the class did ponder the difference between the different ways we teach writing and how we can bridge a gap between these differences. Ideas of multiculturalism and the ways we teach/correct writing were also present within the video that we watched “Shit + Awk + Frag + Huh?”, which looked at how teachers criticize writing across different genders and races, and whether or not this criticism is fair or unfair. The idea that our identity, language, and voice are embedded in other people’s expectations came about as a result of that, which is something I did not consider but largely holds up within the context of the video as well as my TIRP. 

A lot of other people within the class mostly seem to have analyzed grammar and writing style as an important idea, specifically how we vary and how we tend to favor “correct” grammar and how the definition of “correct” grammar varies. This correlates with my assertion within my TIRP about grammar present within students who are still learning English that grammar should be separated from actual criticism of the work. Lu, in Professing Multiculturalism, calls upon her students to call “attention to the difference between form and meaning”, which is a wise approach to undertake, as it allows us to be more accepting of those who have ideas to express that sometimes don’t have a command of form that we find acceptable. This also connects to the idea that language is embedded in other people’s expectations: just because a piece of writing doesn’t fit a certain person’s idea of correct grammar or form doesn’t mean that it is a bad piece of writing that doesn’t properly relegate a message. 

An idea that I touched on but never actually addressed within m TIRP is the idea of “native” and “non-native” speakers as being inherently problematic. I use both of those phrases in my TIRP without actually looking at them, though, when looking back and looking at the discussion we had during class, I’m starting to realize those were two terms that I could have unpacked more and deconstructed, to think more about those terms and how I view them versus how they are utilized. They are tied to assumptions that are unfair, more than actual practices. While I used those terms mostly to refer to the latter, it’s still important to point out the difference between the two ideas and how subscribing to the former can often lead to discrimination and ethnocentrism, for example, the idea that English should be the official language of the US. Further unpacking of these terms would have led to a better understanding of multicultural differences with regards to language and would have further deepened my analysis.

Writing in the School System: How Fundamentals Could Harm Student Writing

My original analysis of equity focused on grammar and how it effects the teaching of writing courses and how students view their own writing. By creating a step-by-step process of learning writing in which one cannot move to the next stage until the first is mastered, grammar becomes a barrier in the path of teaching writing instead of a building block. Grammar does not come easily to everyone, and it is not the natural way we learn our native language. We learn in the vernacular that those around us use. By counting dialects and vernaculars as incorrect, an inequity is created that puts students of writing down and slows their writing. Students can become discouraged from writing and struggle to find their own writing style because they are too focused on being “correct” in the minds of their instructors and future publishers. Instead of writing what they want to say, they write what they think others are looking for.

Zahra and I read each other’s works in class and we both had some similar focuses. While I focused more on the mechanics and teachings of writing, she centered her piece on dialects and how the inequity surrounding different dialects affects people raised speaking them. The inequity in both of our analyses was the argument on what is proper and what is not when it comes to published writing. Some differences in our essays were the focal points of language we used, such as grammar for mine and dialect for hers, and where the inequities took place. I was more focused on writing courses and teaching grammar in the classroom. We both came to a similar conclusion about language and how it is affected by those teaching it.

One of the main discussions in class that stuck out to me was during and after watching the “Shit+ Awk Frag” video. This video, though we only watched part one, outlined some of the issues I wanted to touch on in my TIRP. It discussed how teachers’ comments on students’ work were taken by the students. One thing that struck me while watching the video was the question about whether or not the students made the changes that the teachers suggested. The students who did change their essays according to professor comments made statements that I recognized, that the instructors would be expecting those changes in subsequent drafts and that they must have put the comments there for a reason. When my drafts were given comments in earlier school years, and sometimes we were expected to give those drafts back to the instructor with the final draft, it didn’t encourage me to write a true final essay. I would only change the things that my instructor pointed out, and I knew a lot of students that did the same. In this way, students are not learning how to draft and edit. They are simply learning how to get by quickly with what the instructor wants to see. Even now, I don’t like to edit. By commenting and forcing students to abide by those comments, teachers are not teaching their students how to edit and have more than one draft. They are teaching students how to cut corners in order to get the desired grade.

I think drafting and grammar are important in learning how to write, but I also think that the way they are implemented in our school system currently harms students’ writing more than it helps. If there was a way to make it important to the student individually and not as a grade, it might encourage students to incorporate drafting, editing, and grammar into their writing technique. By forcing it and making it about expectations instead of about the individual, it lessens the assignments affects in the students’ lives.

Reflecting on Equity in Compostion (tirp4 II)

Though I was not there for half of the class discussion it was made obvious that everyone had about the same stance on equity. Equity seemed to resoundingly be something that is necessary if there is to be a diverse and individualized study of composition. This comes in the belief that since there are so many different languages and voices that we must be more inclusive to them. This inclusion is realized when we notice the different contact zones the Min-Zhan Lu talks about in her article Professing Multiculturalism. These contact zones come in where discourse collides. An example of this would be a classroom setting in which someone whose first language is not English is writing on a topic in English. Here we have the expectation of a certain standard with the ability of someone whom was not raised working with that standard. In this example, we can see that we are not being fair or impartial on the part of the student whom does not have the ability to produce an expected work when they have a firm grasp in another language.

Gloria Anzaldua is someone whom is writing in a way that breaks conventions and thus has open an avenue to further conversation on the dismantling of our American writing standard. With her use of her Chicana language she is breaking conventions unapologetically. Without her feeling the need to translate her Spanish, she is letting the audience know that she is who she is which is someone who alternates between English and Spanish, that is who she is, how she thinks, what she knows, and how she wants to be. Most people can respect this, especially the other students in class who did not find it an issue that Anzaldua would use her native language because it only enhances what she has to say.

From reading the other TIRPS that have been submitted it seems that the rest of the class has seen grammer as an important connection. Grammar has been seen as something that is a structure, but one that can be manipulated by the user, so that it works in their favor. Though this does make sense it does not take into account that those critiquing writing are often those still caught up in the conventions of writing and don't take into account the many voices that come out through work for various reasons, be it education, language, or experience, As long as there is still a guidebook that is being adhered to the voice in composition will continue to remain monotonous. Thus, reflecting on my original analysis, I believe I was accurate in my observations and I believe that others feel that same. We can all agree that equity can only be what it claims to be once we've come to terms with the fact that what composition has been can no longer apply when the voices are so diverse.

Challenging notions of identity. Are we defined independently or are we dependent upon definition?

In my original equity analysis I examined the idea of equity in reference to language. I reflected on equity or inequity rather, as to being more of a social conflict in our current generation than a political one. I referenced Gloria Anzaldua’s article “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” and James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language” as well as a couple of policy statements from The Conference on College Composition and Communication and The Association of Writer’s and Writing Programs. The articles both spoke from separate perspective on the issues of language and identity.

The stance I took in my original synopsis was that it is inequitable to deny languages from being independent of the common main languages. More specifically I concluded it was inequitable the way we relegate individuals here in the United States, to Standard English. I went on to refer to this as a form of assimilation to a common tongue, which restructures entire societies. I spoke of how James Baldwin and Gloria Anzaldua made great points on how closely language is tied to identity. I then wrote that I believe that it reduces culture and denies said individuals a sense of identity who are forced to learn Standard English.

In class I felt that we definitely touched on how language is essential to individual identity but I felt we went a lot further than that. After we unpacked Patrick Hartwell’s “Grammar, Grammars and the teaching of Grammars”, the class discussion took a new direction that I thought was relevant and added more to my original synopsis in a facet that I did not explore. We spoke about how grammar is really a pluralistic concept and is independently defined. We spoke about how in Hartwell’s article when he speaks of the first of his “five meanings of grammar” on page 211 and 212 of Cross-Talk, that there is a grammar in our heads. He recalls an exercise given to his students on page 212 in which the students do not know a specific grammar rule yet they know how to use it if they are a “native speaker” of English.

He then uses this idea to make the statement that grammar can be a preconceived concept and notion that is learned but not understood. The fact that he references it to “native speakers” shows that grammar is different among backgrounds, yet preconceived. This then turned our class discussion to the idea that much like language, grammar is very much tied to identity. Therefore for my original argument to state that it is inequitable to deny a person of their independent language as being inequitable on account of simultaneously denying them identity; then is applicable to the concept of grammar.

To deny a person of an independent grammar instead of a set of standard grammatical values would also be to deny them a sense of identity. At first, this seemed to further my previous argument but then eventually challenged it as we reached the last portion of our discussion in class. At the end of class we spoke of whether or not identity was independently defined or rather it was defined by association or assigned. This was in context to our class discussion on Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”. We spoke of Anzaldua’s seemingly uncertain sense of identity. In her story it seems everybody in her life from all of the different cultures that she shares were trying to define her differently from one another. This brought up the question of, do we possibly all form our own identity independently so that we don’t need to identify with a specific culture? We may relate to cultures but when you aren’t one hundred percent living in that culture, can you really identify one hundred percent or can you simply just relate?

This idea definitely challenged the focal point of my original synopsis of assumed identity. If identity is independently defined then in reference to language and grammar, why not have a unified language and grammar? If you can preserve your culture and identity independently, then why challenge the previously referred to socially constructed confines of language and grammar. In the end, I still haven’t made up my mind on where I stand on the tissue, although I still lean more towards my original synopsis. The class discussion however, still challenged my original opinion.

Oct 15, 2015

Politics of Composing: "Traditional" vs. "Multimodal"

Dear All,

Here is how I'd like to divvy up next week's reading among the class:
  • We will all read George's "From Analysis to Design" (in Cross-Talk) and Hood's "Editing Out Obscenity"
  • I'll invite you to read Miller and Shepherd's "Blogging as Social Action" in segments, according to your interests.
    • Interested in the origins of blogging? Read pp. 1-6, 11-14
    • Interested in blogging as a social or cultural phenomenon? Read pp. 1-6, 9-10, 14-15
    • Interested in blogging as a(n art) form? Read pp. 1-9

I'm going to make Ridolfo and Rife's "Rhetorical Velocity" optional. It's a cool case study, and I highly encourage you to check it out as a potential source for your final critical essay. But, I think we'll have enough frameworks to contend with by using just these first three articles.

There is no TiRP due with this reading, so I suggest taking it in stages rather than tackling it all at once. You will likely see some explicit overlap between Hood and Miller/Shepherd, and we will work together in class next week to consider how George's advocating for design might actually support the other two projects, even if she offers a different perspective on the visual and on composing.

Also, here are some key terms for your syllabus to guide our next couple of weeks:
  • Composition
  • Design
  • Genre
  • Intertextuality
  • Mode
  • Multimodality
  • Pedagogy 
  • Visual Literacy

Finally, by the end of the day next Monday (10/19/15), remember to send me an e-mail message -- a paragraph or so in length -- in which you articulate your idea for the final critical essay in as much detail as you can manage at this point, including your research question or dilemma (a.k.a. "contact zone"), tentative sources, and other ideas.

Enjoy!
-Prof. G