This blog was originally posted on November 6, 2014.   I can still remember where I was when I opened my copy of College Composition and Communication (the May 1977 issue) and turned to Janet Emig’s “Writing as a Mode of Learning.” I had recently submitted my dissertation and was in that grad student’s limbo, waking every morning with the panicky thought that “I’ve GOT to finish my dissertation” only to realize that I had, indeed, done so, and preparing to move from the university that had been my home for five years to a new and scary “first Ph.D. job” in Vancouver, Canada. I was sitting on the floor in my tiny bedroom in Columbus, Ohio, where I had written a lot of the dissertation, and I’d taken a break from sorting through stacks of sources and files to read the new CCC.   I read Emig’s article straight through twice before putting it down. I knew her work, of course, and respected it (and her) enormously, but I knew when I read this essay that I was learning to think in a new way about writing. Indeed, at that time, Emig taught many of us to think about writing in a new way.   I am still grateful for all of Emig’s work, and particularly for this piece, so I recently went back to take another look at it. It is much as I remember: clear, straightforward, bold in its claims, scrupulous in its presentation of evidence in support of those claims. And while Emig is careful not to essentialize either writing OR speaking, she is very clear on the differences between them and on the importance of teachers of writing recognizing those differences. Here are the ones she outlined almost forty years ago:         (1) Writing is learned behavior; talking is natural, even irrepressible, behavior.       (2) Writing then is an artificial process; talking is not.       (3) Writing is a technological device, not the wheel, but early enough to qualify as primary technology; talking is organic,             natural, earlier.       (4) Most writing is slower than most talking.       (5) Writing is stark, barren, even naked as a medium; talking is rich, luxuriant, inherently redundant.       (6) Talk leans on the environment; writing must provide its own context.       (7) With writing, the audience is usually absent; with talking, the listener is usually present.       (8) Writing usually results in a visible graphic product; talking usually does not.       (9) Perhaps because there is a product involved, writing tends to be a more responsible and committed act than talking.       (10) It can even be said that throughout history, an aura, an ambience, a mystique has usually encircled the written             word; the spoken word has for the most part proved ephemeral and treated mundanely.       (11) Because writing is often our representation of the world made visible, embodying both process and product, writing             is more readily a form and source of learning than talking. Janet Emig, “Writing as a Mode of Learning,” CCC 28.2 (1977): 122-28.   In the full article, Emig nuances many of these points, but what interests me today in re-reading her work is how changes in technology and especially the rise of “new” media practically beg for us to reconsider these distinctions. While I could talk about each one of the distinctions Emig raises, I’ll concentrate here on four of them: 5, 7, 8, and 9.   “Writing is stark, barren, even naked as a medium; talking is rich, luxuriant, inherently redundant” gives me special pause. Today, with so much multimodal writing that is full of sound, still and moving images, color (and more), the medium of writing seems far from stark or barren—and so more rich and luxuriant than it was in 1977. Talk still seems to me to have those qualities along with inherent redundancy. But writing today is also redundant: we have only to think of retweets to see just how much so.   “With writing, the audience is usually absent; with talking, the listener is usually present.” This is a distinction Walter Ong makes as well, but today I would say—yes and no. Audiences for writing are virtually present and often immediately so, while with talking an audience can be as present as the person next to you, or as distant as listeners to radio or a podcast. In fact, the whole concept of audience is in flux today, as we try to think not only of the “audience addressed” and “audience invoked” that Lisa Ede and I described decades ago, but of the vast unknown audiences that may receive our messages and the ways we can best conceptualize and understand them. Audiences today, it seems, are both present and absent.   “Writing usually results in a visible graphic product; talking usually does not” likewise raises a number of questions. Writing online certainly results in a visible product, but it is digital, not graphic; talking, on the other hand, is often made visible through transcripts or text that accompanies the talk.   “Perhaps because there is a product involved, writing tends to be a more responsible and committed act than talking” strikes me as perhaps the most problematic of the points Emig makes. As noted above, talking now often results in “products” and would therefore seem to have the same opportunity to be “responsible and committed.” But writing—especially on social media sites and other online discourses but also in a lot of print journalism—now seems decidedly irresponsible. You may have heard the story earlier this year about a California teacher who caused an uproar for remarks she made about students on Twitter (“I already wanna stab some kids” for example), remarks she claims were not meant seriously at all. Is it because they are “visible” that she has been taken to task for them? Would it have made a difference if she had voiced the remarks in public? Are these remarks “written” or “spoken”?   Re-reading Emig’s seminal article raises these and other questions for teachers of writing today, questions that many are attempting to answer (see, e.g., Cindy Selfe’s wonderful essay on aurality and the need for attention to it—“The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing” in the CCC June 2009). As always, I want to engage students in discussing and debating these questions. So I’m planning to ask students I regularly correspond with to write to me about their current understandings of the differences, and similarities, between speaking and writing. I wish others would do the same, so we could compare notes.   Credit: Pixaby Image 620817 by FirmBee, used under a CC0 Public Domain License ... View more

In my last post Writing about Writing in the Community College: Another Classroom Perspective, I described how I am implementing a writing-about-writing (WAW) approach to first-year composition in a community college.  This week, I’d like to continue that discussion with a look at the workshop assignments I use in my course. In the first four weeks of the semester, my students read articles by Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, David Jolliffe and Allison Harl, Cheryl Hogue Smith, Rebecca Moore Howard and colleagues from the Citation Project, and several others. We spend time in class examining how these pieces are structured and how the authors have used their sources. To help students practice summarizing, selecting, and integrating sources, I have them do a series of what I call “workshop assignments,” beginning in the third week of class. These assignments are not high-stakes; students earn points for participation and completion, regardless of the ultimate quality of the work. My goal is hands-on practice in working with sources in writing, and specifically, in building a coherent literature review that characterizes an on-going scholarly conversation and ultimately invites the student to join that conversation. I generally start with a question for the first part of the workshop. Depending on what we have read, for example, I might ask the students to explain what academic discourse is (and whether it exists in some universal form), or I might ask them to characterize a “novice” reader or writer. The students must answer the question in a 1-2 page Google Doc, using at least two of the articles we have read as background before introducing their own opinions. In the following class, we look as a group at a couple of samples from previous semesters, noting how writers introduce sources and provide context; we focus on developing a conscious sense of our readers when we are working with complicated source material. The students then share their work with others in their groups (usually 3 or 4 other students). They use the commenting feature in Google Docs to ask questions, make suggestions, and respond to the writer’s work. Student comments generally vary: some address the mechanics of citation, while others ask questions to elicit more explanation or clarification from the authors. I then ask students to revise the piece at home, taking into consideration what their classmates have said. But I also ask them to bring a classmate’s voice into their revision, connecting something they read in a classmate’s paper to their own analysis as a way of expanding it. The students must summarize, quote, or paraphrase another student in their revision, with an appropriate citation. At this point, many students ask for my input on their work. Many of them resist taking peer reviewers’ comments seriously, and some even say that they don’t want to change anything until they know what I think—but I don’t respond at this point. Once students have revised their pieces at home, I make general comments on their work, responding both to the writers and to the peer reviewers, but I try to avoid evaluation. Instead, I focus on highlighting strengths, asking questions, and offering citations that might help students evaluate their own work more effectively. At this point, we will have been working on this single piece of writing for nearly two weeks. For the next workshop assignment, I ask the students to expand this piece to include at least one additional source from our classroom reading as well as some kind of additional data (something I share from my own research, data from published research, or from a simple survey in the classroom).  The expanded piece is reviewed once again by peer groups, revised, and then submitted for a grade.  Students who have worked through the process earn full credit for two workshops. More importantly, they have experience to draw from when they begin writing their own literature reviews a week or so later. Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! ... View more

Three people, three signs: “I’m the autistic kid, and I’m scared.” “I’m the neuro-typical brother, and I’m scared.” “I’m the mother, and I’m scared.” No, the participants in the Women’s March on Washington in January were not just whiners who were upset that Hillary didn’t win. They weren’t just a group of angry women holding vulgar signs. Okay, there were a lot of angry women, and there were vulgar signs, but those holding them would argue that they were merely responding to candidate Trump’s own language: “This p*ssy grabs back.” “Keep your laws off my [silhouette of cat.]” “Just say NO to the Groper in Chief.” “Thou shalt not mess with women’s rights. Fallopians 20:17.” And in the vein of Dr. Seuss:  “I do not like u down my shirt. I do not like u up my skirt. I do not like you near my rump.  I do not like you, Mr. Trump.” Okay, angry AND creative. Future generations will need a good bit of context to understand some of the signs and some of the sentiments: “If only my uterus shot bullets, it wouldn’t need regulation.” “I thought we resolved this sh*t in the ‘70’s.” “Trump, urine over your head.”  We’ll let this generation’s kids grow up before we try to explain that last one. Many of the signs were a response to the ethos of Donald Trump, his ethics or lack thereof. What sort of person had, the day before, been inaugurated? What sort of people were the marchers? How did their rhetoric reveal that? How did their actions? In Arkansas, marchers were attacked online for their violence because a bus carrying four Arkansas high school students, among others in town for the inauguration, was attacked by protestors and had its windshield broken. Some who commented on the story said that marchers should be arrested. One said that they should be shot and left dead in the street. The story and the time stamp on the video capturing the incident made clear that the episode took place several hours after the march was over. No protestors were arrested. With this one exception, none were violent. The rhetoric of the march had a lot to do with anger, but it also had a lot to do with fear. Arguments are based on fact and hard data, but they also appeal to people’s needs and values. A friend commented on Facebook that people who had not lost any rights had no reason to protest. People who feel their rights are in jeopardy do. That was the major focus of many of the arguments summed up on signs at the march:  We are afraid of losing our healthcare.  We are afraid of the effects of climate change. We are afraid of losing ground. We are afraid of being discriminated against because we are women, black, transgender, gay, Mexican, Muslim, disabled. Thus the trio of signs with which I began.  The march had a mission statement: “In the spirit of democracy and honoring the champions of human rights, dignity, and justice who have come before us, we join in diversity to show our presence in numbers too great to ignore. The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.” President Trump’s response, characteristically, was a tweet: “Why didn’t these people vote?” In large part, they did. Some voted for him. If they didn’t vote in 2016, it’s a good bet they will in 2018. Photo Credit: Donna Winchell ... View more

Thirty-four years ago, Lisa Ede and I published a brief essay in Rhetoric Review called “Why Write . . . Together.” In response to that question, we offered a number of strong reasons for writing collaboratively, including the ability to mount larger research projects and answer more complex questions. And we embarked on a research study of collaborative writing across seven fields, which we reported on in a number of articles and a book, Singular Texts / Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing (1990, SIUP).   Our persistent calls for collaborative writing and our insistence that most work in the academy is done collaboratively, whether we recognize it or not, fell on many deaf ears—until the digital revolution made it abundantly clear that collaboration is the new normal, with Wikipedia being one prime example. In addition, the research I did for the longitudinal Stanford Study of Writing showed that our students are happily collaborating on everything imaginable outside of class—and that they are increasingly collaborating on course assignments as well. And of course, scholars in STEM disciplines have been collaborating on their work, almost by definition. Perhaps, we thought, the tide has turned.   But maybe not, as evidenced by a recent report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which asks “Is Collaboration Worth It?” in regard to a panel at the 131 st meeting of the American Historical Association. This report suggests that the tide has not yet turned in the Humanities, where the single-authored monograph is still the gold standard and the sine qua non for tenure and promotion.       A panel here Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association explored the pros and cons of co-authorship in what some argued should be a particularly collaborative field (uncovering and interpreting the past is not a one-person job), but isn’t. Asked to answer the session’s titular question – “Is Collaboration Worth It?” – panelists offered a lukewarm but hopeful consensus: it may not count, but it is, in some sense, worthwhile.    By “crass” accounting, collaboration is “absolutely not” worth it, said Ben Wright, an assistant professor of historical studies at the University of Texas at Dallas who helps lead a free, online, collaboratively built American history textbook effort called American Yawp. Though the project takes up much of Wright’s time, it will nevertheless be an ancillary piece of his tenure file, he said. “I’m not going to hinge my career on this project.”   The encouraging note in this article is that the young scholars quoted all recognize the importance of collaboration for their own intellectual and personal and professional growth, even when it is not recognized by their departments. So I continue to hope that as these scholars mature they will begin to change the tenure and promotion policies in their department. But such change is amazingly slow: 35 years is a long time to have made so little progress!   In the meantime, I see a special opportunity, and an obligation, for writing teachers not only to provide assignments that call for meaningful collaboration and collaborative writing but also to introduce students to the very large body of research that supports the efficacy of such practices. It is a commonplace now for employers, from Main Street to Wall Street to Silicon Valley, to hire those who are good collaborators, good members of teams. And writing teachers know that good members of teams are not “yes” people, but rather those who look at problems from every angle, arguing out all possibilities and listening to varying viewpoints, and who know when and how to compromise without forgoing sound principles. These are abilities that teachers of writing know how to develop in students, just as we know how to create assignments that call for these abilities and that engage students in co-authorship.   So I’m encouraged that we teach students who will become history majors—and many other majors as well. We have an opportunity to send then into their majors with a strong understanding of the need for collaboration—and the knowledge of how to work and write collaboratively. Those are gifts that I hope will keep on giving and that will eventually lead to the kind of change that will make the question “Is collaboration worth it?” not even worth asking.   Image from PIXELS with CC0 License ... View more

I often find myself weighing the degree to which the workshops I lead should concern themselves with things other than the manuscript up for discussion. On the one hand, I believe in a workshop—especially at the undergraduate level—that focuses on writing, and not on what one does with the writing once it’s finished. Put another way, there’s no better element of professionalization than learning to write well. On the other hand, part of being a writer means giving readings and submitting work for publication, and I’m not doing my students any favors by pretending otherwise, or by withholding information or advice that could benefit them. Beyond that, I would argue that the very process of preparing a manuscript for a public reading or for submission to a journal makes one a better writer. When I know that I’ll be reading my work in front of actual, live human beings, I’m suddenly able to see the work with fresh eyes and less patience. I become a better self-editor. Imprecise words, flabby phrases, and lags in pacing—not to mention typos—announce themselves loudly. Similarly, when I prepare to submit a piece for publication, I find myself reading it through the eyes of someone who doesn’t already know me and who has no reason—or time—to give me the benefit of the doubt. The piece, in other words, must stand on its own, and it must stand out. So certainly there’s a pedagogical element to professionalization. Yet I value the workshop as a space that encourages ambition, experimentation, and even failure. That’s how we grow as writers, and much of the work we do in workshop is not meant for public consumption. The writer’s apprenticeship is a long one, and to rush the process—to make one’s work public before it’s ready—does the writer no favors. I’d love for others to weigh in: Does your workshop give a class reading? If so, is it made public? Does your workshop involve educating students in the submission process? Should students in workshop be encouraged—or even required—to submit their work? [This post originally appeared on LitBits on 11/3/11] ... View more

While I am a fierce advocate for revision in all my classes, showing students over and over again how much good, strong revision can improve their writing—can even make it “sing”—I will admit that I HATE to revise. For me, the excitement of writing that first draft, of seeing my ideas take shape on the screen or the paper, pales when it comes to the tedium of looking at every word, every sentence, and trying to improve. I’d rather move on to the next exciting research or project, feeling that my draft should be good enough. BUT IT NEVER IS. And so I bite the bullet and revise away, hating almost every minute of it. Still, when the job is done, I always know that the revising has been worth it, that it is necessary, absolutely necessary. Ironically enough, I was working on revising a long essay when I ran across Jill Lepore’s “The Speech,” an article on presidential inaugural addresses that appeared on January 12, 2009. She writes that the president’s inaugural address wasn’t a given, wasn’t mentioned in the Constitution. But after his inauguration, George Washington went to Congress and delivered a speech, as did Jefferson in 1801. In 1817, James Monroe delivered his post-inauguration speech outdoors, but only because the Capitol was undergoing renovations. Slowly, however, the tradition of addressing not the Congress but the American people took hold, and by 1829, 20,000 people turned up to attend Andrew Jackson’s address. Lepore passes judgment on a number of inaugural addresses, judging some much better, some much worse, but the most interesting part of the essay to me came in her discussion of revision, where she shows how even the best of inaugural address drafters were improved by revision, sometimes revision by someone else. Then she comes to Lincoln’s first inaugural address, the draft of which Lincoln turned over to William Seward for response. Seward, in turn, “scribbled out a new ending, offering an olive branch to seceding Southern States”: I close. We are not, we must not, be aliens or enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angels of the nation. But then Lincoln took up his own revising pen, and wrote the passage that we remember, honor, and admire today: I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. Lincoln’s revision is masterful, his stylistic sense strong and sure, and his address has inspired many presidents since, including most notably Barack Obama. We know that Obama worked hard on revising both his first and second inaugurals, and many believe they will go down as among the most powerful in U.S. history, right alongside Lincoln’s. Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address was of a different nature—very brief, very dark, and very much aimed at his base rather than all Americans. Columnist George Will called it “the most dreadful inaugural address in history.” I don’t have a good basis for comparison, but I can say that this was the least memorable inaugural address I can remember. In a recent essay, John McWhorter helps to explain why when he describes Trump’s inaugural address as more like casual talking and less like “speaking”: The issue is talking versus “speaking,” a more crucial distinction than we have reason to think about until someone as linguistically unpolished as Trump brings talking into an arena usually reserved for at least an attempt at speaking. . . . McWhorter goes on to point out that many capable and intelligent people talk the way Trump does in everyday discourse, or over a beer or two. But most public officials and leaders have tried to move up the linguistic ladder, creating more coherent and memorable and carefully crafted public speeches. McWhorter says we should have seen this coming (perhaps with George W. Bush and Sarah Palin), as social media-speak moved into the White House. So, he says in his article, we may need a new way of listening for this kind of talk. I’m not so sure that a new way of listening will help very much. While I have been a strong advocate for the vernacular throughout my career, and indeed have posted about this issue on several occasions, what Trump is doing does not seem to me to represent a triumph for but rather a diminishment of vernacular English or “talk,” which can have a strong power and beauty of its own. So for me and many other teachers of writing, Trump’s inaugural address demonstrates the need not for a new way of listening but some good old-fashioned revision: perhaps he did seek and receive advice from his trusted advisers about a draft of his speech; perhaps he did revise. If so, all I can say is that more and better revision was called for. ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Jeanne Bohannon (see end of post for bio).   It's here, readers. January and the first few weeks of spring semester are upon us. As I planned my syllabus, recent pivotal events got me thinking about communities and what we mean when we say we're part of one. I wanted to share with you this week an emerging idea about community learning with which my student-scholars and I experimented and provide you with opportunities to create your own sense of class community right in your syllabus as a contracted statement.   Context for Assignment The best time to work through a community statement is usually after the first week of drop-add, when students have settled into class and enrollment numbers have been relatively balanced. My notion is that students have also become acquainted with each other and me, while they also have glimpsed a bit of my teaching style. This is a good time to introduce community-learning precepts.   This writing assignment is an in-class, crowd-sourced opportunity that can serve as a framework for class discussions and a baseline for creating common ground among different student groups. Measurable Learning Objectives for the Assignment Synthesize peers' writing styles into a communal product Apply impromptu peer feedback as recursive writing process Create a crowd-sourced public document Background Reading for Students and Instructors Acts of reading and viewing visual texts are ongoing processes for attaining learning goals in dialogic, digital writing assignments. Below, I have listed a few foundational texts. You will no doubt have your own to enrich this list. The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch. 6, “Working with Others”; Ch. 28, “Language that Builds Common Ground”; Ch. 4, “Reviewing, Revising, Editing, and Reflecting” The Everyday Writer: Ch. 27, “Language that Builds Common Ground”; Ch. 7, “Reviewing, Revising, and Editing” Writing in Action: Ch. 18, “Language that Builds Common Ground”; Ch. 5, “Exploring, Planning, and Drafting” EasyWriter: Ch. 1i, “Collaborating”; Ch. 18, “Language that Builds Common Ground”; Ch. 4, “Reviewing, Revising, and Editing” In-Class Work You will need a few supplies for this assignment. Bring a selection of sticky notes to class. After students have arrived, begin the class session by providing a definition of community writing/learning and why collaboration is important for writers across disciplines and professions. I use Andrea's Principles to emphasize that writing itself is inherently collaborative, whether we think of it in terms of digital or face-to-face interactions with various audiences and co-authors or as a kairotic moment to bring people together. After you have completed this activity once or twice, you will have a starting point for future iterations of your community statement. After students have worked through an understanding of both the base meaning and the value of community writing, pass out the sticky notes, giving each student one or more. Ask students to generate a word or simple phrase that exemplifies their personal understanding of what community writing will denote in your class, then place their sticky notes on the wall -- no particular order necessary. Next, invite students to offer reasons for their word choice. Encourage them to discuss what communities they are or have been part of and why collaboration is key in both academic and professional environments. The University of Connecticut Writing Center offers some good collaborative writing tips that may help you here. As an extension, you may also arrange words in topical order, before you start typing up your community writing statement in your chosen format. I have had equal success with handwritten (use document camera) and electronic versions. I have also asked students to volunteer to lead the group composing with limited success. After you work through this assignment a couple of times, you will have a relevant and rhetorical document that you can include in your syllabus and use as an icebreaker as well. This assignment lends itself to digital, democratic writing and unique contributions across types of classes because students choose their methods of composition, reflect on their process, and have the opportunity to present their work to their peers and publics.   Community Contract Example Below is an example that came from my past two semesters of course communities and large group processing of this crowd-sourced, in-class writing opportunity. We decided to phrase our statement as more of a "you-driven" manifesto. What comes out of your experiences might be similar or completely different. Please try out this assignment and leave comments to let us know how your experience went!   Want to offer feedback, comments, and suggestions on this post? Join the Macmillan Community to get involved (it’s free, quick, and easy)! If you have ideas for Multimodal Mondays or would like to write a guest post, contact ‌.   Jeanne Bohannon is an Assistant Professor of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Kennesaw State University. She believes in creating democratic learning spaces, where students become stakeholders in their own rhetorical growth though authentic engagement in class communities. Her research interests include evaluating digital literacies and critical engagement pedagogies; performing feminist rhetorical recoveries; and growing informed and empowered student scholars. Reach Jeanne at: jeanne_bohannon@kennesaw.edu and www.rhetoricmatters.org.   ... View more

If the Golden Globe awards are anything to go by, La La Land is the greatest motion picture ever made.  Or something like that.   If we go by the most recent box office totals, it isn't half bad, either—but the Oscars haven't weighed in yet and that verdict could do a lot to boost the bottom line even further.   But if we look at La La Land semiotically, a different picture emerges, revealing not its quality or ultimate profitability, but rather what it says about America today.  Not surprisingly, that turns out to be a rather mixed message.   Let's start at the beginning, which, in a semiotic analysis, usually begins with a determination of the immediate system, or context, in which our topic appears.  In this case, that system is the history of Hollywood musicals, romantic drama division (the studio calls it a "comedy-drama," but the "comedy" part of the categorization has been questioned).  This simple act of situating La La Land within its most immediate context takes us right to our first signification, because the era of the Hollywood musical (evoking any number of cinema classics, with Singing in the Rain taking honors as the most cited of La La Land's predecessors) has long since passed, and so the appearance of a musical now marks a difference.  And that difference means something.   I see a number of significations here.  The first might be called the "when the going gets tough, America goes for uplifting distractions" precept.  Especially prominent during the Great Depression (which, not coincidentally, coincided with the true Golden Age of Hollywood), feel-good movies have always provided a distraction from the slings and arrows of outrageous reality, and nothing can beat a musical—especially a romantic musical—for making people feel good.  So it should come as no surprise, as we wallow in the wake of a Great Recession from which only a small portion of America has really emerged, that Hollywood gave the green light to a nostalgic film like La La Land, and that audiences, if not quite in blockbuster numbers, have been lining up to see it.    But if audience nostalgia accounts for a good deal of La La Land's success, there is also the enthusiasm emanating from the Hollywood community itself to consider.  The nostalgia of a movie like La La Land is very much an insider's emotion, an evocation of memories of the sort that those fortunate few who really did emerge from the madding crowd to reach the heights of the gaudiest version of the American dream can experience as their own.  For them (especially for La La Land star Emma Stone) the movie is scarcely fiction at all.  No wonder Hollywood loves it.     A less sunny side to Hollywood's self-celebration in La La Land, however, can be found in the film's use of jazz, a multicultural art form that (as a number of critics have noted) La La Land effectively whitewashes.  There is something of a Mad Men effect going on here, as if part of the film's nostalgia is for the days when the racial politics of filmmaking were more easily swept under the red carpet and white actors could be smoothly inserted into what many regard as black roles. After all, The Jazz Singer is also part of La La Land's genealogy.   Finally, to discover what may be the most profound signification of La La Land, we need to return to the fact that ordinary people are watching it and giving it high marks on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb in an era when much darker movies (e.g., anything with Batman in it, but don't forget Deadpool) are really breaking the box office.  Sure, a lot of this popularity is probably coming from viewers who are profoundly grateful for a movie that isn't some sort of superhero or sci-fi fantasy, but the fact remains that La La Land—for all of the much- ballyhooed "realism" entailed by its protagonists' less-than-professional dance chops—is a fantasy too for the vast majority of its viewers.  Which is to say that its starry-eyed "message" about "pursuing your dreams" is completely out of touch with the reality faced by Americans today.   Because (you knew I'd get to Donald Trump eventually, didn't you?) one of the indelible takeaways of the 2016 presidential election is that a substantial number of Americans have begun to lose faith in that American exceptionalist belief that America is the place where dreams do come true, where everything does turn out the way you want it to in the end if you only show enough grit and determination.  This essential optimism—what Barbara Ehrenreich calls American "bright-sidedness" (look for her in the 9th edition of Signs of Life in the USA on just this topic)—is badly fraying at the edges as the American dream falls further and further out of reach for most of us non-one-percenters.  And while this new reality is not something that the Hollywood dream machine wants to reveal in the nation's movie theaters, it certainly is showing up at the polls.   Which is to say that La La Land's success is a reflection of an America that is passing.  Its follow-your-dreams faith may have worked for Damien Chazelle, but the odds aren't favorable for the rest of us.  Guns N' Roses was certainly closer to the mark for those who do succeed in Hollywood with "Welcome to the Jungle," but the words of a Raymond Carver character (whose family has lost everything) from a short story called "The Bridle" are probably a lot more relevant for much of the rest of America: "Dreams," she says, "are what you wake up from." ... 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As I write this post, the situation around the live video of four young black people attacking and torturing a special needs white teen continues to develop.  When I first heard about the video, I thought of another Facebook live video that made headlines, the police shooting of Philando Castile, streamed to the world by his fiancée Diamond Reynolds.  Both are powerfully disturbing and quite frankly difficult to watch.  Both also suggest a potent intersection between technology and social media and race.  I’ve been thinking about how to teach these issues using Emerging, and here are some essays I would suggest.   Peter Singer’s “Visible Man: Ethics in a World without Secrets” is the logical starting point, since Singer explores not only our willingness to sacrifice privacy for panoptic security but also (and crucially for examining the Castile shooting) Singer discusses “sousveillance,” or the ways in which the watched watch the watchers, precisely what Diamond Reynolds was able to do.   Nick Paumgarten’s “We Are a Camera” is useful, too.  His discussion of the GoPro phenomenon isn’t just about the ubiquity of video technology, but also about the ways in which our experience of life changes by looking at it through a video lens.  It might be a way for students to think about the consequences of ubiquitous live video.   Bill Wasik’s “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project” is a great essay for thinking about the viral nature of digital media and Torie Rose DeGhett’s “The War Photo No One Would Publish” considers the power of images by examining a case of censorship.  Both of these offer additional ideas that students can use to think about the power and circulation of digital images.   Of course, race is even more central to both videos and so you might also consider Maureen O’Connor’s “Race, Ethnicity, Surgery” or Steve Olson’s “The End of Race: Hawaii and the Mixing of Peoples” or Jennifer Pozner’s “Ghetto Bitches, China Dolls, and Cha Cha Divas,” all of which consider the enduring persistence of race in America.   Since these videos also implicitly call us to action, inviting us to advocate for social justice, you could find Charles Duhigg’s “From Civil Rights to Megachurches” a valuable addition for thinking about the necessary elements that enabled the civil rights movement or Kenji Yoshino’s “Preface” and “The New Civil Rights” for exploring the future of civil rights and the kinds of actions that might be needed to bring new models of rights into being.   We’ve always wanted Emerging to be contemporary enough to engage with the world students live in.  I believe it offers ideas and concepts that can help them thinking critically about their world.  Facebook live certainly isn’t going away and our country’s racial tensions aren’t, either.  Hopefully students will gather the critical thinking skills they need to make that world a better, safer place by working with and through some of the readings in this text.    TAGS: social media, race, facebook, video, assignment idea, Peter Singer, Nick Paumgarten, Bill Wasik, Torie Rose DeGhett, Maureen O’Connor, Steve Olson, Jennifer Pozner, Charles Duhigg, Kenji Yoshino, Emerging, Barrios ... View more

Four years ago in the Bronx, I taught Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in a first-year writing course. New York City was still emerging from the impact of Hurricane Sandy, and the trauma of unanticipated change was very much on all of our minds that spring. “Allegory” was a required text in this student cohort’s Introduction to Liberal Arts class, as well as in our writing course. In our course, the program required that we read a novel from a preselected list. That was how I came to teach The House on Mango Street with “The Allegory of the Cave.” Our focus, growing organically out of students’ writing and class discussions, became the significance of education, and the development of resilience in difficult times. Four years later, “Allegory” seems equally relevant, and brings back memories of studying this text as a first-year student many years ago. My first-year liberal arts education did not include a first-year writing course. Instead, I wrote weekly papers for Introduction to Philosophy, gaining an understanding in basic concepts of theory and rhetoric that has kept me grounded both in and out of the academy.  As a result, I remain convinced of the value of a liberal arts education for all students, across majors and disciplines. From that experience of education emerged a key question that still holds value for a first-year students: “What is truth?” Because students enrolled in our institution’s Stretch program have the benefit of having the same teacher and cohort across two semesters, I already had an awareness of students’ concerns with growing as writers. Indeed, as I read students’ reflective writing after the election this past November, I began to brainstorm readings for the spring semester. My goal was to begin in January with a reading that would take up the themes of change and transitions with the question of “What is truth?” In the fall, we had briefly discussed Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, and over break I listened again and again to Patti Smith’s rendition of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” which she performed in Oslo as part of the Nobel ceremonies. “Hard Rain” is the story of a prodigal son who has returned to his community to tell the truth of his experiences. “Allegory” is the story of leaving the Cave for the light outside. When a person returns to the Cave, the Cave’s inhabitants do not believe the truth of the world in the light outside. Different experiences, different truths: How does the audience for “Allegory” make sense of these differences? In other words, “What is Truth?” remains both a contemporary issue and an ancient rhetorical question. In teaching and learning Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” or any difficult text, an important strategy is not to abandon the text at the first signs of students’ struggles. Indeed, those struggles can become significant points for discussion and close re-reading. At the same time, it can be helpful to pair the text with more contemporary and accessible sources so that the students can synthesize rhetorical and thematic relationships across time and place. Those sources may be required by our writing programs, open for us to choose, or selected by students in collaboration and on their own. In any case, the search for truth continues and I look forward to why and how we will address this subject in class this semester. Activity With these thoughts in mind, we completed the follow activity on the first day of the course, in preparation for taking on the first writing project of the semester: Consider the meaning of this following passage from Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave."   And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent. You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? (Plato) Then consider the connections to these two interpretations of the song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" by Bob Dylan. The first interpretation is sung by Bob Dylan in 1963. The second interpretation is sung by Patti Smith in 2016. What connections do you find between “Allegory” and the two interpretations of “Hard Rain”? Make a list of those connections, offering specific examples to support your ideas. Use this list as your study guide for your first reading of “Allegory.” When you reach a difficult place in the text, consult the list. We will discuss and write about “Allegory” in our next class.   Image source: By Veldkamp, Gabriele and Maurer, Markus [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons ... View more

One of the key components of modern writing instruction is the rhetorical attention paid to the question of audience.  And I hardly need to tell whatever audience I may have here what that's all about and why it's important—especially in the era of socially-mediated inscription.  But there is another angle to the matter that, if a great many recent news stories are of any significance, appears to require some attention too, not only by students, but by instructors as well.    I am referring here to the seemingly endless stream of news reports—both from such sources as Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle of Higher Education, on the one hand, and numerous mass media news sources on the other, if the story is shocking enough—concerning college instructors who appear to forget that when writing on Internet-mediated platforms the whole world is your potential audience, because no matter how you may set your privacy settings on Facebook, or no matter how obscure you may assume your Twitter account to be, there is always someone out there ready to take a screenshot, no matter which side of the political divide you may find yourself.   The most recent cause celebre in this regard involves the Drexel University professor whose "All I want for Christmas is white genocide" tweet particularly lit up the holiday season this year.  The point of my analysis here has nothing to do with academic freedom and the related question of what Drexel administrators should or should not have said about it: I'll leave that to the innumerable online commentators who have been doing battle over those matters.  Rather, what I am interested in is the question of audience, and how a failure to consider that question can lead to all sorts of unintended consequences.   The crux of the matter here lies in the assumption that everyone who read the tweet would be aware that the phrase "white genocide" has become a special term of reference for alt-right sorts who use it to deplore the rise of multiculturalism and the impending loss of a white racial majority in the United States.  Those who have rushed to the defense of  the offensive tweet—along with its author—have assumed that everyone would have seen that the tweet was a sarcasm-inflected endorsement of a multicultural, multiracial society, not a call for a massacre.   But here is where the question of potential audience comes in, because while the author of this tweet and his intended audience of Twitter followers may be well aware of the alt-right meaning of the phrase "white genocide" these days, the majority of potential readers of the tweet are not, and to such readers the tweet is going to look appalling without some sort of semantic clarification.  But that is something that you can't do in the text-restricted medium of Twitter, and no amount of after-the-fact backfilling can repair the damage that may be done after a careless tweet. This brings up another, related point.   This is the fact that social media in general—but especially those of the Twitter and Instagram variety—either require or encourage writing in a kind of shorthand.  Unlike the blog form, which allows a writer to stretch out and elucidate when the inevitable semantic and rhetorical ambiguities of discourse threaten to fill the air with confusion, the preferred modes of digital communication today almost presuppose a homogeneity of audience, a readership that understands what you are saying because it already agrees with you and shares your perspectives.  Hence a writing in shorthand, even when the platform allows for discursiveness.   And that raises a risk.  For there is something about social media that seems to encourage provocation rather than argumentation, especially in the form shorthand-ed jabs.  Certainly this is the case when writers assume that they are writing in safe echo chambers wherein those who "belong" will nod their heads in agreement and those who don't will be offended.  But while offending those who aren't on one's side in a dispute may be "fun," it sure doesn't make for an effective argument.  In fact, it is likely to backfire—which is one reason why social media do not provide a sound platform upon which to learn university-level writing.   This matters, because at a time when America is tearing apart at the seams, it behooves us as educators to be doing everything that we can to encourage careful argumentation rather than reckless provocation.  I am not so naïve as to believe that simply resorting to rational argument will always win the day (Aristotle himself made no claim to guarantee this in his Rhetoric), but a carefully developed, audience-aware argument will, at least, have a far smaller chance of backfiring than a provocative tweet will.  Thus, it doesn't really matter whether the Drexel tweet was intended to be provocative or not (I suspect, however, that with its openly-avowed sarcastic intent, provocation certainly was part of its composition); what matters is that its disregard for audience has produced a situation that puts higher education on the defensive, not those whom the tweet meant to ridicule. In short, the thing has backfired, and, in the context of a number of similar recent backfires, this is not something that higher education can well afford. ... View more

It is not always easy to distinguish between drama as literature and drama as theatre.  My view has always been that good drama is based on good literature, but having said that, we all know that there are moments in the theatre when the action moves far beyond the printed page and its stage directions.  Those are the moments when we realize that drama is theatre. This meditation is a result of my having just seen a wild adaptation of Molière’s A Doctor in Spite of Himself directed and adapted by Christopher Bayes, whose roots are in the Theatre de la Jeune Lune.  Bayes tossed out the standard text and built a commedia dell’arte version on the comic bones that Molière had provided beneath the dialogue. The result was dynamic, wildly comic, and enthralling to the audience.  And while the slapstick, the ham acting, the sometimes lewd jokes, the inappropriate, but funny, music, and all the  screaming, shouting, dancing and romping was over, we realized that the story line that Molière concocted as a way of ridiculing the current medical profession was in a bizarre way, still intact. What I realized–and what delighted me–is that no printed version of this adaptation could ever have done justice to it.  And that goes for any version on YouTube or even the iPad or laptop–because much of the fun of seeing the play was in sharing the pleasure with a living audience. In teaching I think it is important to try to talk about the aspects of the play that go beyond the printed page, but at the same time to make sure that the literary values are clear and that they remain the bones on which the production must be animated. How do you teach students the difference between drama as theatre and drama as literature? What plays and/or performances have illuminated this difference for you and for your students? [[This post originally appeared on LitBits on December 21, 2011.]]  ... View more

I kicked off this term by setting some New School Year’s Resolutions for myself, following the model of David Gooblar’s 4 Resolutions for the New Semester on Chronicle Vitae. Overall, my focus was on building more community (and by extension, participation) and improving assessment. Now that I have reached the midpoint in my school year, it’s time for some reflection on what I have accomplished and what I still need to work on. I’ll address my ten goals from the fall one-by-one: Increase class participation. Oddly enough, the Digital Design Journals that I added to my course led to more interaction among students. I intended the journals to give students more practice in analyzing digital texts, which they did accomplish. Each student also presented a journal entry to the course, which led to great full-class discussions of rhetoric and design. I need to figure out how to accomplish the same engagement in my online courses. Give students more choice. I asked my technical writing students to Choose Their Own Projects, but I need to revise the assignment a bit. In particular, I need to make some Changes to My Coursework Proposal Assignment, which invites students to choose their assignments. I also need to do some work to ensure that they are stretching themselves with new genres they have no experience with. Switch to Pass/Fail grading. I did use Pass/Fail grading extensively in both courses I taught. The system isn’t perfect yet, however. Toward the end of the term, there was no time for revising, undermining the entire system. I wasn’t comfortable with failing students in the courses when their work didn’t achieve B-level standards. I have to build in more structure to ensure that students have time for revising failing work. Give feedback more quickly. The Pass/Fail system helped me out with my speed. I zipped through grading for all in-class work and weekly writing activities. Using mini-conferences more in my face-to-face class helped me provide lots of feedback as students quickly needed it. I need to figure out how to bring that dynamic to the fully-online courses. More formative feedback. I am doing better on this goal. When students did turn work in early enough or consulted me on drafts, I worked on providing constructive criticism and challenging them to improve their work. I need to do more for this goal, though. The timing complicates things—when I don’t receive work until the last minute, formative feedback is useless. There’s no time for revision, so students won’t use the advice. Ask students to track their own work. I added a participation log assignment to ask students to spend more time Tracking Their Participation. In addition, I developed a Participation Log Analysis Assignment to help them evaluate their participation in the course. Encourage more (or better) reflection. I need to spend more time on this goal in the spring. I asked students for reflection statements when they turned in their major projects; however, I haven’t done much to improve the process. I am going to work on integrating reflection more with the structures that encourage students to turn drafts in earlier. Add videos to online courses. I started the Fall Term with a WebEx session where I walked students through the course website and answered some basic questions. Only two students were present during the video, not surprising given that we share no common time when we can meet. Worse yet, I never managed to edit the video and post it online, so only those two students benefited. There are definite challenges. For example, I need to find $170 to buy Camtasia, so that I can edit footage properly. I think the videos are worth it, but it is a harder goal to achieve. Add an AMA session. I added an Ask Me Anything session, to all my classes this fall, as I explained in my Inviting Students to “Ask Me Anything” post. The discussion went really well. Seeing the questions students asked probably told me as much about them as my answers reveals about me. I’m definitely going to keep it as part of the beginning of all my courses. Encourage community. Around mid-October, I tried Organizing Online Writing Groups for my classes. I asked them to connect with one another for feedback and support as they needed it. The strategy still needs work. The biggest problem has been that students waited until the last moment to post to each other. The assignment led more to checking off a requirement than connecting and building community. I think it can be successful, but I’ll need to do more work to make it happen. Overall, I accomplished a lot during this fall. There are still several places where I need to do more, but I’m happy with my progress so far. How about you? Was your fall term successful? What are you looking forward to doing next term? Leave me a comment below and let me know.   Credit: Kitten Meme created on the ICanHazCheeseburger site ... View more

In this series of posts, I am looking at what we can learn from peer feedback practices in other disciplines. Lynn McNutt talked to me about peer feedback in acting.   My chat with Lynn focused largely on the logistics of peer feedback in the acting classroom, but she did make one comment that continues to stick with me: “I feel like I have become better as an actor once I became a teacher, because I used to skip steps.”  She went on to explain that teaching brings it back to basics, and that process helps her as well.   I do know that I too have become a better writer from having taught writing.  I have a better sense of how to do what I do as an academic because I have spent so much time trying to explain it to people who have no idea how to do it.  I’ll end this semester by keeping this post brief, but I wonder - do you find the same? ... View more

Recently I read (but can no longer find!) an article discussing the rise of social media in terms of its relationship to orality. The writer made the point that much of what we read on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites is conversational, deeply inflected by the conventions of speech and oral culture (with more and more emojis offering substitutes for emphasis, tone, etc.). I’ve written before about Walter Ong’s notion of secondary orality and its influence in our hyper-mediated society, and I’ve described what we might call “secondary literacy,” which is literacy infused with orality—as we see today on social media. It’s writing, all right, but writing that aims to be very much like speech. Like many other teachers of writing, I’m pondering what such shifts mean for our classrooms, for what we teach and how we teach it. In a course on the history of writing, I always began with the struggle for the vernacular in medieval Europe . . . tracing the eventual downfall of Latin and Greek and the rise of indigenous languages/vernaculars. Think of early writers of vernacular languages (Chaucer, e.g.) and you will think of some of the world’s great literature. So hooray for vernaculars! But it’s seemed to me for some time that social media brings a new sense of “vernacular,” or everyday speech, and its rise has been swift and pervasive. Challenging traditional notions of decorum or civility as well as conventional norms of all kinds, social media writing crests like a huge wave over us, bringing with it experimental uses of language that seem downright magical and innovative as well as threatening (hate-based messages especially). I have only begun to scratch the surface of this issue, to which I hope to return soon. But right now, I am concerned that in our writing classes we look closely at this “return of the oral” and its implications for how we lead our lives, especially online. Bakhtin writes of “the ability to respond” or “respondability” being key to discourse exchange, and I agree: all of what we write and speak responds in some way to what others have written and said. And we need to take advantage of this ability to respond, to get our voices out there with the messages we care most deeply about. But we also need to talk with our students about responsibility, the ability to be accountable for what we write and speak, to present credible and detailed evidence in support, and to accept consequences attendant upon our words, whether spoken or written. In a time when very powerful people want to “shut down” parts of the Internet, to move away from “net neutrality” and otherwise police the Net, and when very powerful others want absolutely no curbs on what is posted, then we badly need writing teachers and students everywhere to search for some middle ground that will encourage and reward personal responsibility and to put that responsibility to work in social media writing. [Photo by Johan Larsson on Flickr] ... View more