Part of leading a discussion in a creative writing workshop involves encouraging students to give rigorous feedback and criticism to their classmates, while also fostering an atmosphere of respect and friendship.  Hank Devereaux Jr.—the narrator of Richard Russo’s academic satire Straight Man—observed that, in the creative writing classroom, “tough, rigorous criticism is predicated on good, not ill, will.” As teachers, it’s part of our job to create an environment where student writers feel comfortable receiving—and giving—detailed feedback and constructive criticism.  The workshop, after all, isn’t going to work if the only thing the student author hears is “great job” or “I really liked the words you used to convey your ideas.” Creating an environment of friendly and well-intentioned critique is difficult in any creative writing classroom, but it’s particularly difficult in a creative nonfiction classroom.  As writers, we’re frequently defensive when it comes to our work, but as creative nonfiction writers, we sometimes wind up feeling defensive about our experiences and ideas as well.  Once, as a student in a workshop, I had to listen as a classmate explained that she didn’t like the piece I had written because the “narrator” was so whiney and self-absorbed.  And while I like to think that I have thick skin … come on.  That hurt. I try to be particularly conscious of the student author’s feelings and protectiveness of her work even as I ask my students to talk specifically about what isn’t working in a piece.  Still, even with my attempts at sensitivity, some students are stressed out and even hurt by the entire workshop experience.  Who can blame them? They’ve just revealed themselves—exposed their realest, innermost selves—without the safety net of a fictional narrator or poetic speaker, and now they’re getting criticized for their efforts.  That can be disheartening, even infuriating. A couple weeks ago, my book—this manuscript I’ve been working on, in various forms, for over five years now—was rejected by a publisher.  Again.  As most working writers know, rejection is just part of the process.  You read the nicely-phrased note, sigh to yourself, then get back on your laptop and find the next contest or university press to send the thing to.  You nod to yourself, silently wish the editors who rejected you good luck with their future endeavors, and then get back to work. At least, that’s how I think it’s supposed to happen.  The truth is, that’s not how it works for me.  Instead, I give out this little gasp.  Then I pace around the room a little bit.  Then I announce—either to my wife or, if she’s not home, one of the cats—“I don’t know why I continue to operate under the delusion that I’m a writer.”  My wife, for her part, knows to let me say this out loud, to get it out of my system.  And the cats seem to know the same thing—they seldom interrupt my pity parties. Keep in mind, I’m a fairly successful writer (“For the type of loser who doesn’t even have a book,” Mopey Me adds with a frown).  I’ve published over two dozen essays, reviews, and interviews in some of the best magazines and journals in my field.  I say this not to brag, but to point out that I have no reason to feel like a loser when something I write—from the shortest essay to the book manuscript itself—is not accepted for publication.  But I do. Inevitably, I get over it.  I take a couple of days, but then return to the manuscript in order to decide, “Was it them, or is it me?”  Sometimes, I make changes.  Sometimes—like this most recent time—I conclude, “You know, I think this is ready as it is.”  And I send the thing back out again.  Sometimes I’m successful, sometimes I’m not.  The point is, I essay. But the larger point is that I understand personally the frustration and disappointment when a piece of writing is received less enthusiastically than its author might like.  My students’ sadness (or anger) at a workshop discussion may not be exactly the same as my own response to a rejection, but it’s darn close, I think.  That’s important to keep in mind—too often I get frustrated by my students’ frustration.  “I’m trying to help you!” I think to myself.  But it’s useful to remember that they’ve poured as much as themselves into their assignments as I have into my book. Lately, I’ve taken to telling my students what I’m working on, and when the work gets rejected—or accepted.  I want them to understand that the occasional disappointment is inevitably part of this process, but that if they persevere, they might know the joy that comes with realizing they have succeeded in reaching—and moving—their audience. Any other tips on how to deal with student frustrations in the writing workshop?  For that matter, any advice for me on how to deal with my own bouts of self-loathing that inevitably accompany rejection? [[This post originally appeared on LitBits on 8/28/12]] ... View more

In this series of posts I am looking at what we can learn from peer feedback practices in other disciplines. Andy Brown and Sharon Hart talked to me about the studio art critique. Many differences emerged as I discussed critique with Sharon and Andy.  But I was heartened to note one important similarity across our disciplines: critical thinking.  I generally like to think that critical thinking is at the heart of what I do in the writing classroom.  I acknowledge that students are going to leave our FYC class and go on into their majors.  The specifics of the work we do may not carry forward.  But I would hope that the skills of critical thinking we practice in the classroom will go forward, as those are the skills I imagine students most need as they proceed in their academic careers.   Andy was quite explicit about the role of critical thinking, particularly in relation to the practices of art in an academic context and the myth of talent in the field generally.  He explained that while it’s useful to have an inner spark, art in an academic setting is more about hard work.  I find this to be a useful notion for my writing classes, as well.  Many students think they just “can’t write,” but the truth is that within the FYC context it’s much more about hard work.   Critique assists that work, as does peer revision.  And when it’s good, it’s good.  Both Sharon and Andy had similar descriptions about really good critiques: students are engaged and invested, responding to each other, questioning each other, and carrying the class through their own discussion.  They become thinkers in relation to the work and they also feel empowered to share those thoughts, and perhaps to defend them, with others.  Again, so similar to the processes of writing I hope to encourage.   It feels like students often resent peer revision as a kind of “busy work.”  Perhaps it would help if I were to better contextualize it in the larger work of critical thinking for the class.  What do you think? ... View more

The events happening in the United States during the last week motivated me to talk about tolerance and intolerance today by updating a post from November 2010. That post reminded me that tomorrow, November 15, is the International Day for Tolerance. Established by UNESCO in 1996, the event is based on 1995 Declaration of Principles on Tolerance “to take all positive measures necessary to promote tolerance in our societies, because tolerance is not only a cherished principle, but also a necessity for peace and for the economic and social advancement of all peoples.” If there were ever a time when we need to promote tolerance, that time is now. One effective, but simple, way to explore tolerance is to look at the ways people talk about the concept during some class sessions this month and then produce projects that share their exploration with others on campus. Here’s one way to accomplish that goal through in-class discussion and collaboration. Session One Ask students to record their understanding of tolerance. They can record personal experiences, working definitions, and responses to events in the news. The goal is to create a touchstone that they can return to later. There is no right or wrong answer. Everyone in a community can talk about tolerance for the values and actions of others. Move to UNESCO’s 1995 Declaration of Principles on Tolerance. Article 1 of the Declaration specifically addresses the “Meaning of tolerance.” Ask students to read the entire Declaration, paying particular attention to that section. Discuss the definition in the Declaration and how it compares to students’ own understanding. Explore the language that is used in the document specifically. Unpack the complex words, and note how the document attempts to be inclusive. If class time allows, students can work in groups, each taking one point of Article 1 and rewriting the explanation using less formal language. They can imagine themselves writing for younger students or writing sound bites for a general audience. After discussion of the Declaration, ask students to record how the document relates to their earlier notes on the concept either in class or for homework. Session Two Review the definition(s) of tolerance from the previous session, explaining that the class will spend time this session comparing to the ways that tolerance is discussed publicly. Share news stories about tolerance, intolerance, and bullying with the class. You can use local examples or these recent pieces: This election was a cultural civil war. Liberalism lost. Intolerance won. from the Washington Post People are wearing safety pins to stand against intolerance, from the New York Post The Knock at the Door, from Inside Higher Ed The Shocking Intolerance of Anti-Trump Liberals, from the Daily Signal These Photographers Chose to Confront Intolerance and Document What Works, from Time The Incidents Since Election Day, from Inside Higher Ed Ask students to begin by separating objective details and material from subjective details and material. Have them note when objective details are used and when subjective details are used. Talk about how purpose and audience influence the information and the language that is used to present it. Have students apply their definitions of tolerance to the articles, considering these discussion questions: Do the articles specifically use the word tolerance or intolerance? Are other words used to describe tolerant (or intolerant) attitudes? How does the perspective shift if you rephrase the pieces to use the antonym? How does the discussion in the articles align with the UNESCO Declaration and their own understanding? Finish the project by asking students to write about how one or more of the articles relates to their own or the UNESCO Declaration’s understanding of tolerance. Ask students to draw conclusions about how tolerance is discussed (implicitly or explicitly) and defined. Alternately, move the project toward sharing students’ exploration of tolerance outside the classroom. Ask student groups to create a text that explains tolerance and urges others to promote and practice tolerance every day. Check with your school’s office of equal opportunity office, student affairs, or residence life for help distributing students’ work to the campus community. Students can work on projects like these: create posters that are displayed on campus. write letters to the school or local newspaper. produce video or audio podcasts that share their messages. arrange a flash mob on tolerance. design an infographic that presents details on tolerance. create a playlist of songs that reflect tolerance, with notes on why they were chosen. curate a display for the library or student center. assemble a class photo essay to display on digital sign boards on campus. write flyers, pamphlets, or brochures to distribute on campus. post a meme-style campaign on social media, modeled on the photos in the image above. Troubling actions and disturbing words have been commonplace during the political campaigns this year, and the last week has shown me that students need an opportunity to slow down and think about the issues. Many are scared, uncomfortable, or sad. Creating space and time in the classroom to contribute toward a safe, tolerant campus community seems like one of the best ways we can respond. What strategies are you using to address students’ post-election feelings and teach about tolerance? Please tell me in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.   Credit: tolerance by ambar stefania, on Flickr, under a CC-BY 2.0 license ... View more

One type of analysis that plays a role in argumentation is causal analysis. I started trying to do a causal analysis of some of the arguments in the recent presidential campaign, but the cause-effect relationships soon took on the complexities of the New York subway system. I decided to look only at some of the causal relationships involved in the infamous email controversy. That alone shows that we generally err in assuming that one cause produces only one effect. Consider the letter that James Comey, Director of the FBI, sent to Congress on October 28, 2016. It certainly had multiple effects. It sent Trump into a paroxysm of delight and Clinton into a rage.  Both were understandable reactions. What a difference there was when he wrote his second letter on November 6, 2016, announcing that the “new” emails found (on Anthony Weiner’s computer) had been studied and that they reinforced Comey’s original conclusion  that there were no grounds for prosecuting Clinton.  And the effect on the voting public? That depends. For some, neither letter made any difference at all. In many states, voters heard about the first letter, went to vote, and then heard about the second. The first letter had the potential to affect their vote, but they didn’t find out about the second in time. Those in states with no early voting at least had the chance to know about both letters. Many of those who heard Trump’s explanation of the meaning of the first letter went to the polls believing that the investigation into Clinton’s emails had been reopened.                 Let’s consider an example of working in the opposite direction, from effect back to cause. Again, a one-to-one correspondence is often an oversimplification. One news commentator pointed out—and I paraphrase—that Comey’s role in the presidential campaign would not have been an issue if Clinton had not done something that warranted an investigation in the first place: use a private email server. So using a private email server was the effect that caused the investigation into her emails, which was the effect that caused Comey to reconsider his conclusion not to recommend that she be prosecuted for wrongdoing, which was the effect that caused the respective reactions from the Trump and Clinton camps—a causal chain.                 Clinton’s use of a private server was often given as a reason for not voting for her. I suspect, however, that that was only a contributing factor. More likely a number of different factors went into a decision not to vote for her. By the end of the campaign, critics were poking fun at Trump for responding to every accusation with a reference to Hillary’s emails. He hammered at that reason for not trusting Clinton, but the intensity of his outrage at what he considered to be crimes for which she should be jailed was probably the result of more than the email issue.                 Causal analysis is another means of exploring an issue to discover all of the arguments that can be made about it. With enough time, someone could analyze many of the complex reasons that people voted the way they did in 2016. To oversimplify the cause-effect relationships is to cheapen people’s reasons for voting as they did. Credit: Clinton vs. Trump 2016 by Marco Verch on flickr ... View more

I’m writing this the weekend before the election. So much has already been written about the candidates, the process, the scandals, the lies, the cheating, the intimidation, the vitriol, the ignorance, the racism, the misogyny, the failures of the press, media bias, confirmation bias, the polls and the pollsters, the pundits and their punditry that it’s hard to imagine having anything new or important to add to this tsunami of text that continues to crash, in wave after wave, on the increasingly polluted remnants of what little time we have left on Earth here together.   And it’s even harder for me to imagine what words I could compose just prior to November 8 th that will be worth your time when they go live on November 11 th .  Whatever happens this coming week, you will have gone to work in one world on Monday morning and you will have finished up teaching in a very different world by Friday.   I just want to draw attention to one data point before I get on to the challenge of imagining what teaching post 11/9 (the day after the day after the election) is likely to entail. When I checked Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com this morning, beginning the day as I have every day for the past many months, and found that Clinton’s chances of prevailing on Election Day had continued their decline, I dropped down further on Silver’s page to look at the graph of how his polling numbers had changed, day-by-day, since his first report on June 8 th .  (Silver, recall, skyrocketed to fame following the 2008 election by predicting the results in 49 out of 50 states, practically down to the county-level. He experienced immediate Internet fame afterwards, via the hashtag #natesilverknows followed by something impossible—i.e., what you’re eating for breakfast tomorrow.)   Silver’s method grabs all reputable and semi-reputable polls, then models various ways of correcting for bias and reliability to come up with a prediction that has aspirations of neutrality. Silver strives to separate the signal from the noise, aims to provide a constantly updated, clear-eyed vision of what’s more likely to happen than not. And what I saw this morning is that, while the odds of who will win the election has waxed and waned for the past four months, as we slouch towards Election Day, Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning have declined .6% since early June. All the money, all the rage and hatred, all the debates, all the airtime, all the sleepless nights, and all the worry—and that’s it: .6%.   That says a lot to me about rhetoric and about the many industries that thrive on political and social dysfunction.  Does it make sense to talk about persuasion in what is, essentially, a binary system? It seems that very, very few people have changed their minds over the course of this ghastly, grueling crawl through the sausage factory. The maps are red and blue and then shades of each, but when it comes to voting, there’s no gray area, no possibility of registering a qualified, complex, nuanced, contextual, or contingent response; there’s no way to go gray.   And yet, all of the attributes that the act of voting doesn’t allow are attributes of the creative mind, attributes that education is meant to cultivate, encourage, and nourish. They are all attributes that we’ll need after the election is over, regardless of who we voted for, if we are going to be able to promote ways of working together across, around, and through our differences.   Teaching Post-11/9 Ann and I have an essay in Habits of the Creative Mind entitled, “On the Three Most Important Words in the English Language,” where we discuss different ways of making connections between thoughts and observations. “And” is one of the three most important words. It allows us to connect like to like: Clinton is this, that, and the other thing; Trump is this, that, and the other thing. (I was playing with this kind of connecting in the first paragraph of this post.) This is paratactic thinking. It’s our most primal way of making sense of the world: this and this and this and this. It’s the thinking that children do when they’re telling stories about their days: we went here and we went there and I fell asleep and Mommy woke me up and . . . .   The other two most important words in the English language allow us to escape from the flattening sameness of paratactic thought. “But” allows us to qualify; “or” allows us to imagine alternative possibilities. These ways of connecting ring in worlds Of contingency: X won the election, but Y refused to concede. Of uncertainty: Neither X nor Y won the election; they tied (this actually is possible!). Of opportunity: If X wins the election, we’ll have a Constitutional crisis or cooler heads will prevail and we’ll find a way to reclaim the virtues of compromise. Teaching after 11/9, we need to make sure we’re helping our students—and ourselves—to remember that the future is ours for the making and that, at the mico-level of the individual mind, we prepare ourselves to participate in future-making by practicing complexity, practicing nuance, practicing qualification, and, practicing kindness. I’ve added the last term on this list to my thoughts about the habits of the creative mind after reading Beth Boquet’s new book, Nowhere Near the Line, where she elaborates on the necessity of practicing this way of being in relation to one another: "Too often we think of kindness as a quality someone either possesses or does not. We admire a kind person as a rare object. We speak of kindness as a random act, something that surprises us precisely because it is unusual, unexpected. Kindness, however, is really a habit, an orientation, something we practice and, indeed, can get better at." Finally, post 11/9, I think we also need to refamiliarize ourselves with the original texts that have shaped and structured the democratic ideal—as we should have done post 9/11. Ann thinks we should all hit the pause button and spend the next week having our students read and discuss the Constitution. That sounds to me like a really good place to start. ... View more

No, I’m not talking about the calorie-burning exercises we feel we must do in the days leading up to and following Thanksgiving, a.k.a. Day of Carbs. Rather, I’m talking about a favorite, and seasonally appropriate, writing exercise. The first story in Bill Roorbach’s Flannery O’Connor Award-winning story collection Big Bend is titled “Thanksgiving.” The story begins with a phone call. Ted’s sister-in-law, Mary, is calling to convince him to come to Thanksgiving dinner this year. And because he has vowed to “become part of the family again,” he agrees to come—but he isn’t happy about it. By the end of the story, events have caused him, in a fury, to upend the Thanksgiving Day dinner table. Roorbach’s story gives rise to a very straightforward writing assignment: A character, in a fury, has upended the Thanksgiving Day table. Write the scene that causes him/her to do it. What better tinderbox is there, emotionally speaking, than an entire family all gathered together for one night? I like this exercise because it isn’t quiet or subtle. There is no way to avoid conflict in a scene that ends with a flipped-over dinner table, especially on a holiday, especially the holiday during which we are supposed to give thanks. Moreover, this exercise requires students to complete certain mini-exercises along the way, such as: Writing a scene with multiple characters in it; Creating a conflict that causes the climax provided in the prompt; Providing sufficient detail so that we know exactly what is on that table prior to it being overturned. I am thankful for this exercise, which students seem to have great fun doing. I am thankful for Thanksgiving for generating the sort of familial tensions that generate good fiction, and I am thankful that this is not the case in my family. And I am thankful for the leftovers in my refrigerator, which, I understand, really ought to bring about that other kind of exercise—the kind that doesn’t involve typing. [[This post originally appeared on LitBits on 12/2/11.]]  ... View more

Today's guest blogger is Amanda Gaddam‌ (see end of post for bio). Like most first year composition instructors, I talk about audience early and often in my classes. We theorize audiences for assigned readings, we analyze audiences for political speeches, and we talk about the role of the audience for various genres of writing.  When it comes to their own writing, however, my students sometimes ditch the idea of writing for an outside audience because they know that, in most cases, I’m the only person outside of peer review who will read their texts.   The following multimodal assignment framework provides an opportunity for getting students to invest in the idea of audience by selecting their own subjects, defining their own exigences, and determining their own deliverables for their projects. Background Reading These texts from Andrea's handbooks are useful introductions to this assignment: The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch 2e, “Analyzing audiences”; Ch. 11e: “Conducting field research” Writing in Action: Ch 4e, “Analyze your audience”; Ch. 13e: “Conduct field research” The Everyday Writer: Ch 3d, “Analyze your audience”; Ch. 13e: “Conduct field research appropriately" EasyWriter: Ch 1f, “Reaching appropriate audiences”; Ch. 13e: “Doing field research” Assignment Perform a genre analysis on sample profiles of places. Reading profiles is a good way to begin talking or continue conversations about audience, exigence, and context, and there are countless sample profiles available freely on the internet, including “A National Treasure: Wrigley Field Turns 100 Years Old” and “Seeing Trump in Trump Tower.” I like to have students investigate genre conventions in small groups using a handout with genre analysis questions adapted from Bawarshi and Reiff (see also my previous post, Multimodal Mondays: A Low-Stakes Assignment for Understanding Blogs as Genre ). The large-group discussion can and should focus on theorizing the various connections between audience and the genre conventions and contextual conditions they’ve identified.     Introduce concepts of multimodality and visual rhetoric. Use print ads, commercials, movie trailers, and other multimodal texts to continue conversations about genre and to focus on how visual features complement and complicate content. This is usually an ongoing, weekly discussion in my classes; we talk about issues of arrangement, imagery, fonts, typefaces, colors, etc. and how these concepts are related to audience, context, and purpose.  Students choose a local location to profile. They visit the location at least once to conduct interviews, write observations, and take photos or videos. They should bring their notes, photos, and videos to class for collaborative in-class workshops in which their peers help them articulate a purpose, audience, and direction for their projects.  Students write a proposal detailing their exigence, audience, and proposed mode(s) for the project. This is a good time to check in with students, either via informal feedback on their proposals or in quick conferences to make sure they understand the concepts discussed in class and have a clear sense of how they will be putting those concepts to work in their project.  Students create drafts of their profile projects for peer review. For assignments where the deliverables vary greatly from one student to the next, it may be useful to have the students design the parameters of peer review: the kinds of feedback they want to receive, the size of the groups, and other logistics.  Students present revised piece to the class and/or the audience they identified at the beginning of the project. Students might submit pieces to websites, film or art festivals, newspapers, or a number of other places in order to reach a real audience for their work. Submission guidelines are good points of discussion to address during the proposal phase, and having an audience in mind beyond a classroom fosters more buy-in for the project from students.  Follow up with a short statement of rhetorical objectives (SORO) for guided reflection. Students’ rhetorical choices may not always be perfectly executed or perfectly clear, but the SORO gives them an opportunity to discuss and justify their choices. Understanding what students actually worked on during the project may help instructors provide more helpful and individualized feedback. DePaul University’s Office for Teaching, Learning & Assessment provides a sample SORO that instructors might use for this project or future assignments.  Evaluation This project provides a lot of room for customization based on individual course goals and learning outcomes.  Instructors can provide word count requirements or other boundaries for the project as they see fit and/or deem appropriate for their students.   Because of this and the probable variety of projects’ structures, instructors may find it productive to develop a rubric for evaluation with their students, taking into account the components of the project that students worked on the most and focusing on the reflection and process elements for the project.   Reflection I’ve done open-topic essays in my classes in the past, but I’ve always run into the same problems with the fabricated or imaginary audiences—students just don’t seem to consider them in any authentic way because they know that I’m the only person who’s going to read their writing, or the audience that I’ve instructed them to write to doesn’t necessarily align with their reason for writing.  Audiences are so closely tied with exigence that it makes sense in an open-topic assignment for students to identify their own audiences once they’ve figured out what they want their work to do for and to their readers.   Guest blogger Amanda Gaddam is an adjunct instructor in the First-Year Writing Program and the School for New Learning at DePaul University. She holds a B.A. in English with a concentration in Literary Studies and a M.A. in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse with a concentration in Teaching Writing and Language from DePaul, and her research interests include first-year composition, adult and non-traditional students, and writing center pedagogies.   Want to be a guest blogger on Multimodal Mondays? Message Leah Rang for more information. ... View more

On October 27, Tiffany Martinez, a first generation Latina student, wrote a blog post narrating a humiliating encounter with a professor who assumed, based on Martinez’s use of language, that Martinez had plagiarized a paper. The photo at the head of the blog shows the instructor’s handwritten comment on her use of the word “hence”: “This is not your word.” The instructor confronted Martinez with the charge of cheating—in front of her fellow students.   I first saw the blog on Facebook; a friend and recent college graduate shared the post. It struck a chord with a number of students who were on the receiving end of similar comments, or who had seen similar incidents of implicit bias and insensitivity in their classrooms. A couple of days later, faculty forums also began to consider Martinez’s plea to be accepted and in academia (see here for an example).   Much of the discussion that I’ve seen thus far is situated in the context of private and public four-year institutions, where lines between privilege and the lack thereof are often obvious.  That’s not the case where I teach, at a community college in a rural/suburban area. Is there an implicit bias here? Certainly. After all, we are “just a community college,” where the students are not “academically inclined,” and may be “headed straight to the work force, anyway.”  My colleagues and I will admit that we are suspicious when we get a polished paper with strong vocabulary – from any student. And we check that paper for plagiarism. We call that student in for a conference to discern whether the words do indeed come from the student.    Those of us who teach in two-year institutions have good intentions: we believe in the promise of access and the value of academic support. We also recognize the cultural disconnect that many of our students face when they enter our classrooms, and we struggle to value and affirm our students’ lives and experiences while at the same time inviting them into “our” academic culture. Nonetheless, our biases exist, and we have to address them; otherwise, we put our students in an untenable position. We are asking that they adopt the linguistic customs of our discourse community, and we can be harsh in our denunciations when their efforts to do so are not successful – when their good faith attempts to figure out our rhetorical expectations, use new vocabulary, and make sense of grammar and punctuation rules result in awkward or garbled sentences. And yet when our students produce something that closely approximates the writing we have held up as “good,” we immediately assume that they could not have produced such work on their own. “Either you fail or you cheated” – this isn’t a fair set of alternatives.   So how do we respond? How can I—or my colleagues or students—learn from Martinez’s piece? Perhaps I could share it with my freshman writers, as a way of exploring implicit bias. Many of them have experienced bias, but I suspect they are not familiar with this term (and there’s my implicit bias, again).   But the piece also raises further questions: was Martinez’s response reasonable and appropriate? Could there be another side to the story? The piece illustrates both the value of a democratized Web, where those traditionally without power can call out injustice, and the danger of the open internet, where memes and tweets rule, where context and nuance are stripped, inviting rapid (and sometimes thoughtless) responses. This, too, would be worth discussing with students: what is the process for discerning truth here?   Or perhaps the students and I could approach the post, and the comments which sparked it, in a rhetorical context. The instructor’s comment—“this is not your word”—could be interpreted as an accusation of plagiarism (“I don’t think you wrote this”), but also as a prohibition (“you are not allowed to use this language”). I wonder which interpretation arises first for my students, or if they perceive the comment differently. Approaching the comment in terms of rhetorical choices open to the instructor for the given situation could help students understand that I am also a writer, and I need feedback on the effectiveness of my rhetorical choices, just as I offer such feedback to them.   I am thinking of using the piece as an end-of-term reflection: students will identify a comment I made on their work during the course and write their own blog post in response. They will discuss their interpretation of the comment, the implications of the comment, and the relative success of the comment as a rhetorical choice, given the purpose of my feedback. Such an exercise will reinforce rhetorical choice as a threshold concept in my course, and it will help me understand how my students perceive the feedback I give them—as well as answer a nagging question that arose when I read Martinez’s piece: have I written a comment such as this, not recognizing how it would be read by a student?   And of course, having begun a study of argumentation, we could also analyze Martinez’s post in terms of appeals to ethos (noting her explicit presentation of credentials at the outset), to pathos (a plea to be “loved”), and to logos (contrasting her need to present credentials with those who would not need to do so to be accepted). Ultimately, the piece invites discussion of discourse communities: boundaries, membership, treatment of “imposters,” shibboleths, apprenticeship, appropriation, and the role of language in negotiating each of these. My students are not yet where Martinez is academically, but she has raised the issues in a voice which—I believe—they will find authentic and relevant.   Kudos to her. ... View more

In this series of posts I am looking at what we can learn from peer feedback practices in other disciplines. Andy Brown and Sharon Hart talked to me about the studio art critique.   Fear.   I guess walking into these conversations I expect the emption to play a big role in critique, mostly because of the associations I had with the practice through articles like the one in the New York Times. “Crit” made me think of Yale’s “pit” made me think of students breaking down with ragged sobs from the cruel destructive comments of their peers and professors. This impression was not dispelled by looking at the book about critique that Andy loaned me, The Critique Handbook, which offers some sample comments such as, “The story that you present in this scene is interesting, but your figures are badly drawn” and, “It is very well-drawn but it leaves me cold. Do you even know what this is about or why you drew it in the first place?” (6). From my perspective as a teacher of writing, such comments feel themselves a bit cold. Given the mythic status of critique, I wondered what role fear (and the process of dispelling that fear) played in the undergraduate studio critique? I’ll also admit that one of the reasons I was so interested about fear is that I generally have no idea what students in the classes I teach are feeling, if they feel anything at all. While perhaps not the emotion I would want to cultivate, at least it was an emotion. I wondered what it might add to the process of peer revision, as well.   Actually, my chat with Andy brought the topic to the forefront of my thinking, since it seemed a subtext for many of the things he talked about. For example, he mentioned the importance of setting an environment in critique where students feel empowered to speak because many might be afraid of being embarrassed. Students can simply be afraid to talk. Sharon’s critique handout addresses this explicitly: “Do not be afraid to talk.” Both of them also discussed how they address this in their classroom practices by modelling good critique, reframing student comments back through the vocabulary of the class, asking students direct questions, and offering feedback and assessment on students’ critique comments. I’ve done some similar things in my writing classes, reinforcing peer revision by pointing out good comments from students and offering a larger conversation about the process through the elements of the class and its vocabulary.   In discussing this kind of fear, both Sharon and Andy reinforced for me that peer feedback practices are learned behaviors, ones that need careful cultivation. I feel like peer revision worksheets do a lot of that work in the writing classroom. Students don’t have to be afraid in answering the sheets because they are well-skilled at answering a teacher’s questions. It’s locating methods to empower them to speak in comments on the papers themselves that remains a bit of a challenge for me, though I can’t say if the (de)motivating emotion in the classes I teach is fear or just indifference.   But for art students, there is another side to the fear coin and that is the fear of the artist subject to critique. In this sense, I was reminded of Becka McKay’s comment about creative writing students—that they believe that what they write comes from their souls. Andy explained that at first students are afraid because they don’t quite know what they’re doing yet, or they’re afraid their work isn’t good enough, or they’re afraid of what others might think of them and their work. Sharon emphasized that critique is not about sugar-coating. But it’s not about tearing them down, either. Both emphasized that one of the lessons of critique is that it makes better artists. Sharon went as far as to call critique a luxury: “When else do you have all those eyes looking at your work?” Andy shares his own experiences of harsh critiques and explains how they helped his work, and Sharon told me that when a critique is good (even if tough) it makes you want to work and make and continue.   If the remedy to the fear of offering peer feedback is scaffolded instructions and close moderation with a hefty dose of modeling, then the remedy to the fear of receiving peer feedback is to understand that the process is vital to becoming better. I don’t know if my students believe me when I tell them that peer revision makes writing better, and I don’t know that they are afraid (not identifying as compositionists in the way that art students identify as artists or creative writers identify as writers). But I do know that starting from the question of what we feel offers me a new way to open up all of these questions in my classroom. And I think I will give that a try.   More next time. Don’t be afraid to comment (wink, wink). ... View more

With the presidential election coming to a close today, I want to update a post from November 2010 that offers some great discussion opportunities for the week after Americans cast their votes. The original post was based on the Psychology Today article “Clues to When CEOs and Politicians Are Lying to You” by Todd B. Kashdan, which summarizes a working paper that analyzes the language use of CEOs and CFOs during quarterly earnings conference calls. The researchers found three ways that language betrayed the truth of the speakers on the calls: They avoid personal references, using “we” rather than “I,” for instance. They overuse “over-the-top glowing positive statements.” They never hesitate. Their language shows “absolute certainty.” These findings can easily be applied to texts that students read in the classroom or as part of a research project. In the aftermath of the election and the political maneuverings that are sure to follow, students can also apply these findings to the various statements by candidates, their supporters, political action groups, journalists, and pundits. To try the activity in the classroom, I’d follow these steps: Spend some time discussing each of the clues that Kashdan identifies and brainstorming examples of the kind of language that each refers to. Talk about the audience and purpose of the phone calls in Kashdan's article. While these strategies may point out liars and lying in some rhetorical situations, they wouldn’t be markers for every text. Students could brainstorm rhetorical situations where a healthy amount of plural personal pronouns (e.g., we, our, us) would not necessarily denote lying. Analyze a specific political document for rhetorical indications that the author may be stretching the truth. Students can look at recent political speeches, campaign ads, and media coverage. Ask students, given this context, to consider the practice of live fact-checking, which has emerged as a media strategy this election cycle. To extend the conversation, students might explore any of these articles: “Of course presidents lie” by John Blake, CNN “The history of lies on the campaign trail,” by Daniel Bush, PBS NewsHour “10 Big Fat Lies and the Liars Who Told Them,” by Bill Moyers, Moyers and Company “All Politicians Lie. Some Lie More Than Others.” by Angie Drobnic Holan, NY Times “Politics is always about lying” by Scott Timberg, Salon No matter how the election turns out, I’m sure there will be lots to talk about in the classroom. Please use the comments below to tell me about your ideas for talking about liars and lying this political season.   Credit: I'm not a liar, by Tristan Schmurr, on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license ... View more

Jonathan Alexander‌ and Elizabeth Losh‌ are currently at work on Understanding Rhetoric, Second Edition. The following post continues to reflect the journey, even though it was originally posted on February 13, 2012. For me, one of the biggest challenges of working on a graphic book has been adapting to thinking and composing in a different medium. Indeed, one of the lessons we have learned in the process is that we can’t just think like “text” authors; we also have to begin to think visually. As we sketch out the chapters, panel by panel, we try to provide detailed visual cues for Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon, our fabulous artists–who, in turn, not only modify our initial image directions and augment them beautifully, but have also challenged how we understand and use text in the graphic book form.  Along these lines, one of the earliest lessons we learned about our use of text is that we were initially relying too much on captioning and not enough on dialogue to carry the instructional weight of each chapter. That is, we were thinking like the text-producing scholars that we are, and not like the collaborative graphic authors we needed to be. We were constantly explaining rhetorical concepts, for instance, while ignoring how images and dialogue—the principal features of the comic form—could be used to convey our ideas about writing. Comparing initial drafts of the first several chapters with their more recent revisions shows a steady move away from captioning to significantly more reliance on dialogue and visuals. Concomitant with that shift has been a shift in how we think about the project and the processes we have to engage in to maximize our use of the comic form.  For instance, we’ve frequently found ourselves sitting around my kitchen table, reading dialogue out loud to make sure that our characters strike the right—and credible—tones.  Moreover, the dialogue format forced us to focus on the process of understanding rhetorical concepts. We’ve had to show characters, in action, coming to understand concepts such as logos and ethos, or the complexities and recursiveness of the writing process. The format of the comic book allows us—actually requires us—to model, dialogically and visually, what it means to compose.  I focus on this particular example of how our composing process had to shift because it seems to me a powerful reminder of how different genres call forth different modalities of thinking, as Anis Bawarshi argues in Genre and the Invention of the Writer: The writing prompt does not merely provide students with a set of instructions. Rather, it organizes and generates the discursive and ideological conditions which students take up and recontextualize as they write essays. As such, it habituates students into the subjectivities they are asked to assume as well as enact—the subjectivities required to explore their subjects. (144) In our case, our self-inflicted writing prompt—compose a graphic book about composing—required that we assume and enact a different kind of compositional subjectivity.  Put another way, the particular rhetorical affordances of the genre created the possibilities through which we could think about writing and composing differently. How so? We rediscovered the intensity of the process of writing since we were now writing both collaboratively and visually. We discovered the joys and frustrations of working, not just with each other, but with artists and editors. We talked endlessly with one another and our collaborators about various topics and how to present them. We were constantly negotiating meaning, confronting how the expression of an idea visually might resonate very differently than it does textually. For instance, Liz and I wanted to present ourselves in one chapter as spies rappelling down a skyscraper while uncovering the mysteries of the writing process—but when we looked at the art and realized that it was more reminiscent of 9/11 than of a lighthearted spy caper, we knew the idea had to be reconceived. We learned a valuable lesson in visual resonance—one we could not have encountered had we been working alone with our text. We had to see our words in visual action to understand their potential implications. The process of learning to write in a new genre has cued us in powerfully to the many sensations that our students must encounter as they sit in our classes, learning new genres, new modes of composing, new ways of thinking. But more than this, the dialogic and visual nature of the genre required that our composing processes shift significantly. Peer review, for instance, became not just a step in the writing process, but rather an integral, nearly weekly negotiation of meaning as we attempted to work through, clarify, understand, and (in many cases) radically revise what we were doing. Perhaps most importantly, we not only remembered the challenges of learning to compose in a new medium, a new genre, but we have to come to value more highly the importance of thinking across media and genres. Working with the same concepts (in our case, rhetorical concepts) in multiple genres literally allowed us to re-see and to re-vise how we presented them, perhaps even how we have come to think about them. From an essay-like proposal to text-driven chapters to a dialogue-driven script to drafts of visually rich panels, each step in this process offered us the chance to re-examine what we were doing—to refine, clarify, and even discover different ways of thinking about our content. This project has been an excellent reminder of the power not just of the writing process but also of conceiving of that process through and across multiple genres and media. I’m thinking about how I might provide my own students with the same sense of discovery that we have had with this project…. ... View more

This post is a continuation of Teaching and Learning at Midterm: Free Empathy (Meditation 1) Second Meditation: On Creativity and Slow Grading This semester, the graduate students enrolled in my Practicum course have initiated many thoughtful discussions on the role of creativity in teaching basic writing and learning to write for academic audiences and purposes. For a practitioner/inquiry project devoted to this theme, a participant in practicum developed and guest-taught a lesson for my students enrolled in Stretch. The lesson included a performance by Evelyn Glennie, whose TED Talk “How to Truly Listen” has been a significant touchstone for our writing project. After we listened to Glennie perform Steve Reich’s "Clapping Music,” our guest-teacher asked us to write in response. In my own graduate school training, we were encouraged to write with students, to experience the challenges of process and product writers ourselves. I rarely write poetry anymore, but this poem emerged as an attempt to gain understanding and empathy for struggles with neuro-diversity. I presented the poem to students as an introduction to my frustrations with slow grading. Organized Chaos (after Evelyn Glennie's performance of Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music”) Flow-- breathing in flow-- and sound evolving from the tips of fingers and the sound beating of a heart (My brain these days My sewing in odd moments) Organized chaos (Needle pushing through cotton Quilting pieces layering cotton over rayon over cool polyester) creating new offerings from old notes trying and trying again organized chaos the sound of flow Right now, my brain is moving in pieces and fragments that need quilting together. Glennie's work reminds me of this, of Difference as asset and not deficit. She reminds me how and why art is created. She reminds me of the need to create art, and to remember writing as art and quilting as art, the seaming together of disparate pieces to create larger wholes. I used to write a lot of poetry. Now I write in many forms. Powerpoints are quilts and quilts are 1000-page books of short stories and essays. In my mind, through the tips of my fingers, I clap with Glennie. Organized chaos. I flow. The practice of Free Empathy comes with its own challenges. For example, I need to constantly check long-held teaching practices and processes for relevance in current contexts. Often this checking happens in the moment, as new and unexpected conundrums arise. But as we move through midterm into the final weeks of the course,  Free Empathy offers the most consistent lesson plan I know for changing times.   ... View more

Today’s guest blogger is Gene Melton‌, a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at North Carolina State University, where he teaches courses in composition and rhetoric and in British, American, and LGBTQ literature. In Spring 2017, he will begin serving as academic advisor for the Department’s Literature majors.  He earned his PhD in 19 th - and 20 th -century American literature at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.   Opening Classical Argument The foundational assignment for my WID-based first-year academic writing and research course is a classical argument on a topic the students choose based on their individual interests and current base of knowledge. While I do allow students to conduct outside research for this classical argument, I do not require them to do so, nor do I expect them at this early point to be at all aware of academic, peer-reviewed sources. I begin with this assignment because it centers argument as a key intellectual activity on which I can build tothe further work of the course, which asks students to engage with texts from a variety of academic disciplines and to explore the pleasures and pitfalls of conducting research at the undergraduate level.   One of the first challenges this assignment presents is the choice of topic. Students often do not recognize the merit in writing about their very specific interests, initially opting in favor of rather sweeping, “trendy” issues. For example, a student might at first propose a paper on a vague notion of gun control when she is really invested in proposing regulations on hunting in her home state. Indeed, I find that I must conference with the students one-on-one as they are generating ideas to help them see that they can find viable topics within their personal interests and to help them develop the courage to risk doing so. I hope that students take from this part of the process the recognition that their interests can (and should) motivate their academic work and that they need to narrow down any topic to a scope reasonable for the parameters of a given writing situation.   Another challenge the students confront in this assignment is conceptualizing what exactly is at stake regarding the issue/topic they have identified and just how far they can go in supporting their assertions on the matter, given their current level of knowledge about the issue and access to evidence to support their claims. To help students work through their ideas, I ask them to think in terms of articulating a precise claim that does not go beyond the bounds of what they can defend through specific reasons and credible, concrete supporting evidence. We also examine assumptions (especially unstated ones) and consider how to respond to potential opposing views, elements of argument that often seem to have been overlooked or under-emphasized in students’ prior writing instruction. While most of their final drafts still rest on limited evidence and lack fully nuanced understanding of the issue(s) involved, they nevertheless demonstrate an evolving sense of what informed academic audiences demand of serious intellectual inquiry and argumentation.   Integrating Knowledge from Academic Domains Once the students have completed this first project, they turn next to learning to read scholarly articles from three broad domains of academic inquiry:  humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. As part of this study, I ask the students to practice analyzing the rhetorical features of sample articles I provide and to discuss the similarities and differences in the way scholars in the various domains write about the knowledge they are generating and how those scholars articulate and support their claims in their essays and reports. At this time, the students also begin to explore formal academic research as they develop an annotated bibliography of peer-reviewed articles related to the topic about which they wrote their classical argument. They will also eventually write a comparative rhetorical analysis of two of the articles they collect as part of their research, demonstrating in the process not only their understanding of the rhetorical features in their representative disciplinary texts, but also their own evolving knowledge of argument in general.   Revised Classical Argument As a final, capstone project for the course, students return to their initial classical argument and revise it in light of the research they have conducted and their increased awareness of the range of rhetorical possibilities available to them. It is rewarding to see students articulate the same argument from a more informed, nuanced perspective, complete with substantive evidence and precise, formal documentation. Equally (if not sometimes more) rewarding are those times when, after having spent three months researching and reflecting on their topic, students adopt a position on the issue that is completely opposite to the one they championed at the beginning of the semester. Either way, I find that the recursive nature of this sequence helps students to recognize their own growth as writers of academic arguments. ... View more

I was not old enough to vote for John F. Kennedy in 1960, though I was all in for him, so I cast my first presidential vote for Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 election. That was a wild and crazy election, with Barry Goldwater campaigning far to the right. And I’ve seen some very strange elections since—think George Wallace in the 1968 election and the uproar of the Democratic convention that year. And of course the extremely odd election in 2000, when the eventual president (George Bush) didn’t win the popular vote and the Florida recount was a debacle (to say the least). But I’ve never been through an election like this one, and as researchers are reporting, I (and millions of fellow Americans) are suffering stress-related effects from the anxiety over it. A friend even has nightmares in which he is attacked by a huge Trump-like figure. I’m retired from full-time teaching now, but I’ve never wanted more to be in the classroom with young people to hear their thinking about this election and the precedents it is setting. I don’t wear my politics on my sleeve in my classes, but I am honest with students about my reasoning: I encourage them to think carefully through the issues and to make decisions based on the evidence they can gather, which is much easier said than done. So I don’t proselytize, but I don’t hide my decisions if I’m asked, and I spend time in my classes analyzing the rhetorical moves and strategies evident in presidential stump speeches, policy statements, and so on. This election seems to me particularly important in that regard: I see voters on both the left and the right swayed completely by media representations and misrepresentations and parroting “facts” that have been proven over and over to be anything but. This is dangerous, so dangerous in fact that I think it’s worth devoting time in this next week to the kind of intense rhetorical analysis that can help students cut through some of the noise and get not only to the gist of candidates’ statements but to the underlying assumptions that are often passed over. It’s these assumptions, about gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, and economic responsibility, that are so appalling to many following the Trump campaign. I’ve already cast my vote—enthusiastically—for Hillary Clinton. And I hope students everywhere are giving her candidacy close and careful scrutiny. But most of all I hope they are going to vote. In writing about early America, de Toqueville said he thought the people of this young country were ingenious and imaginative and capable of great things, but that the focus on radical individualism (a word he coined) might make us sometime in the future susceptible to the arguments of an autocrat or dictator, and that our democracy would depend on resisting those appeals. So whatever else you do today, urge your students to VOTE. When future generations ask what you did in the election of 2016, what will you say? [Photo: Vote by Theresa Thompson on Flickr] ... View more

Of course it was inevitable that I should turn my semiotic eye this time around upon one of the most significant events in popular cultural history: the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan.  But the question is not whether Dylan deserved the prize (I really really don't want to go there) nor even whether songwriters should be equated with musically-unenhanced poets; no, the semiotic question is, quite simply: what does this award signify?   Let's start with the fact that I am discussing this at all.  How, one might ask, did it come to pass that the posthumous legacy of the Swedish inventor of dynamite should come to be not only the world's most prestigious award, but should also have bequeathed to a small, and rather secretive, committee in Stockholm the power to create and even influence history?  For that is what the prize does: it plays a significant role in determining which scientists, economists, and writers will be most remembered and whose work will be given most authority, and it also, through its Peace awards, has a way of intervening in ongoing human conflicts and, as in the case with the award to Barack Obama, electoral politics.   It is also worth noting (and this should be especially poignant for scholars) how the Prize also has a way of indicating what really counts in human intellectual endeavor: physics, but not mathematics; medicine, but not biology; chemistry, but not engineering; economics, but not political science; literature, but not painting, music, or sculpture; and nothing in the way of scholarship—not history, nor anthropology, nor literary criticism, nor even philosophy (which is why Bertrand Russell was awarded the prize for literature).   So let me repeat, how did the Will, and will, of one man from a rather small country accomplish this?   I can't answer this question entirely, but I can offer some suggestions.  First, it is useful to note that the Prize came into existence just on the cusp of the final transition from feudalism to capitalism.  For where science and art were once the retainers of Crown and Church, whose patronage alone was sufficient reward for early scientists and artists, in the capitalist era individual enterprise and  competition are the motivators for human endeavor.  (It is striking to note in this regard that the Nobel Prize was created by a wealthy industrial capitalist, but the award is handed over by the King of Sweden.)  Competition is what prizes are all about, and as we head further and further into the era of hypercapitalism, we accordingly get more and more competitive awards: more Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Tony's, Pulitzers .  .   . the list seems endless.   Thus, we might say that the Nobel Prize got there first, was, that is to say, the first arrival in the bourgeois era of competitive achievement.   Itself the title holder in the Most Venerable Award sweepstakes, the Prize is a signifier of capitalism's worship of whatever is biggest and "best," turning even art and science into a contest—with all the "winners" and "losers" that contests entail.   Which takes me to the second signification I see in the Dylan award.  For by giving the prize to a superstar of popular culture, the Nobel committee has not only given its vastly influential imprimatur to a once marginalized region of human creativity, it has signified that the ancient wall between "high" culture and "low" really is tumbling down.  (I've been saying this for over twenty years in every edition of Signs of Life in the U.S.A., so I ought to be grateful to the folks in Stockholm for putting some authority behind it.)   But having really, shall we say, dynamited the last remnants of high cultural ascendancy over low, the members of the Nobel committee may have opened a flood gate that they did not anticipate.  For now a host of songwriters, screenwriters, TV script writers, and goodness knows who else that the culture industry has made rich and powerful, will come knocking at their door.  Having everything except a Nobel Prize, they will likely be found lobbying, imploring, schmoozing, advertising     .  .  .  in short going through the whole playbook of competitive awards seeking to gain the one trophy missing from their collections.   I can see it now: laureates on the red carpet. ... View more