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778 articlesFebruary 2003
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Abstract
The CCCC Guidelinesfor the Ethical Treatment of Students and Student Writing in Composition Studies written by Paul Anderson, Davida Charney, Marilyn Cooper, Cristina Kirklighter, Peter Mortensen, and Mark Reynolds provides a common frame to help composition specialists as we navigate and discuss the various ethical dilemmas we face while conducting research. As a graduate student involved in my own qualitative research, I find the Guidelines beneficial, and I am committed to following them, including the first guideline that calls for composition researchers to comply with all Institutional Review Board (IRB) policies.1 However, in the past two years I have submitted proposals for the same study to eleven IRBs at colleges and universities across the country. While I strongly support the need for obtaining IRB approval, I believe as a discipline and as individuals we need to work to revise the IRB process. As it is now practiced at many institutions, the IRB process positions composition researchers and composition research in potentially problematic ways. In fall 2000 when I began my research into the Intercollegiate E-Democracy Project, a national online project where students across the country discuss various social and political issues, I knew I had to mail consent forms to
January 2003
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(Editor's Note: Jim W Corder submitted the following essay to Rhetoric Review in 1996. The essay was accepted for publication but never published because of uncompleted correspondence and manuscript preparation. We decided to typeset and format this essay in order to bring to readers this first posthumous Corder essay, convinced that it is an important addition to his rhetorical canon. Introducing the essay is a contextual note by Keith D. Miller, who like this editor, is a former graduate student of Corder's.)
December 2002
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Interchanges: Navigating in Unknown Waters: Proposing, Collecting Data, and Writing a Qualitative Dissertation ↗
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Carole Bencich, Elizabeth Graber, Jenny Staben, Katherine Sohn, Navigating in Unknown Waters: Proposing, Collecting Data, and Writing a Qualitative Dissertation, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Dec., 2002), pp. 289-306
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2001 CCCC Outstanding Book AwardThe vast majority of academic books are written from the scholar s position, even those that primarily concern teaching. Writing/Teaching, on the other hand, is a book about teaching written from the position of the teacher. As the title suggests, Kameen s book is split into two halves yet both, in different ways and through different discourses, are derived from his work in the classroom, and his own struggle with issues and problems all teachers of writing must face.The first half is a series of essays originating from a graduate seminar Kameen team-taught with professor and poet Toi Derricotte in 1994. Included are essays Kameen wrote, a selection of pieces written by other members of the group, and a reflective postscript. These essays combine personal narrative, reflective meditation, and critical inquiry all used as discourse to depict and examine the process of teaching.The second half of the book contains essays on Plato s dialogues primarily Phaedrus and Protagoras as a means to interrogate the position of teacher through the lens of the most famous of Western pedagogues Socrates. Here, Socrates is used as a tool to examine and critique both Kameen s own teacherly identity and, in a wider sense, the set of cultural forces that pre-figure the available positions for both teacher and student in contemporary education.What unites both halves is the way Kameen approaches each the personal and the scholarly from his position as teacher. The texts presented provide the occasion for a complex and nuanced meditation on the classroom as a legitimate arena for the production of knowledge and research. Sure to be timely and controversial, Writing/Teaching will enter into the debate on whether to reconfigure the relationship between research and teaching currently taking place among teachers of composition, cultural studies, and rhetoric. Compelling reading for teachers or those contemplating a career in the profession.
July 2002
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Abstract
Argues that the situation of adjunct instructors, particularly those who piece full-time employment from part-time appointments, is appalling and that there is responsibility to be meted out to all the various interests connected to the academy that benefit from it. Explores how adjunct instructors and graduate student can make decisions about their careers based on the prevailing conditions of employment.
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gnes Varda's recent documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse explores the modern parallels to the ancient practice of gleaning leftover produce from the fields in the wake of the harvesters. Among the most fascinating individuals Varda comes upon is a young man rescuing spilled fruit and vegetables after a farmers' market in Paris. The man is extremely knowledgeable about the nutritional content of each item; has, in fact, a master's degree in chemistry; makes his living distributing free papers and advertising flyers outside train stations; and as his avocation teaches French to the Senegalese immigrants who share the housing project he lives in. Varda shows one of his classes. He is in love with teaching, has drawn charts with a vast number of careful illustrations of words, has an enchanting rapport with his students. But he does not get paid for his teaching: he has organized his classes for free. He is a gleaner, a rescuer of those who have nothing wrong with them but have been passed over by the system. Varda admires him. Traveling across France like a migrant agricultural worker, making a documentary with a hand-held digital video camera, she is la glaneuse of the film's title. For all the usefulness of their work and the joy they have in it, undoubtedly these gleaners-Varda, the French teacher, and others in the film-exist at the margins of their professions and their society. But for all the marginality of their financial existence, the film makes clear that they have chosen their paths thoughtfully and are happy doing what they do. Ghosts in the Classroom, a recent book of essays by adjunct instructors, makes clear that there are many college teachers in the United States who glean the developmental and introductory classes, lead a marginal financial existence, and are not at J a me s Pa p p is associate director of MLA English Programs and the Association of Departments of English. Most of his writing focuses on issues of university teaching and administration, but he has also published on literature, folklore, and translation and has an article forthcoming on Hungarian revival architecture in communities inside and outside Hungary. He is currently editing a collection of papers on the research of teaching in language, literature, and rhetoric.
June 2002
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Abstract
Reviews 301 tions, and its clear articulation of the antifoundationalist position, will make this book a valuable resource for scholars and students alike. Bruce McComiskey The University ofAlabama at Birmingham Bruce McComiskey, Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric, (Carbon dale:, Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), xiii + 156 pp. Contributing to the conversation about rereading/rewriting the his tory of rhetoric, Bruce McComiskey's Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric clearly summarizes the raging and wide-ranging debates regarding the use value of revisiting the Sophists; compellingly argues for a historiographical methodology, which he terms "neosophistic appropriation"; re-reads Gor gias on his own terms, rather than Plato's; and, finally, attempts to realize his own methodology by rethinking Gorgias's (potential) contribution to "contemporary pedagogical and political ends" (p. 1). Recapping the seminal arguments of the past several decades regarding scholarly attempts to redeem the Sophists from their Platonic condemna tion and to reclaim their practices and theories, McComiskey's summary will surely find an appropriate home in graduate seminars on the history of rhetoric. Working with and against Edward Schiappa's criticism of particu lar neosophistic research (but curiously neglecting John Poulakos's response to same), McComiskey offers "neosophistic appropriation" as a corrective to Schiappa's (via Richard Rorty) methodological taxonomy of "histori cal reconstruction" and "rational reconstruction." Although McComiskey agrees with Schiappa that we "must maintain a clear distinction between the goals and methods of historical scholarship that interprets ancient doc trines and 'neo'historical scholarship that appropriates ancient doctrines for contemporary purposes" (p. 8), he argues, in contrast, that "neosophistic appropriation" is methodologically distinct from rational reconstructive ap proaches insofar as "neosophistic appropriation" writers "search the past for contributions to modern theoretical problems and problematics" (p. 10). "Although," McComiskey further argues, "all neosophists engage in the critical act of appropriation, not all neosophists appropriate ancient doctrines in the same way" (p. 11). Identifying three different approaches, McComiskey ultimately values and identifies with the third. The first approach "appropriate [s] Plato's characterization...either valuing Plato's misrepresentations or disparaging them" (p. 11). The second approach "put[s] aside Plato's mis representations of sophistic doctrines, appropriating doctrines instead from actual sophistic texts and historical interpretations of them in order to find common threads among the 'older sophists' and contemporary composition and rhetorical theorists" (p. 11). And the third approach, although similar to the second in purpose, attempts to "understand the unique contributions 302 RHETORICA of individual sophists...to contemporary rhetorical theory and composition, (p. 11, emphasis added). Claiming that the "more specific the appropria tion, the stronger the resulting neosophistic rhetoric," McComiskey turns his attention to a reappropriation of the Sophist Gorgias. Part One of Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric provides a provoca tive rereading of Gorgias's On Non-Existence, the Encomium ofHelen, and the Defense of Palamedes, arguing that, read together, they constitute a "holis tic statement about communal and ethical uses of logos, a statement that runs counter to Plato's (mis)representation of it in his dialogue the Gor gias" (p. 12). Chapter 1, then, argues compellingly that Plato misrepresents Gorgias's theory of rhetoric as foundational, specifically as based on a foun dational epistemology. For example, as McComiskey points out, Gorgias, in the Palemedes, uses a form of the Greek eido to express the concept of knowl edge, which "implies an understanding that is derived empirically from a situation"; whereas Plato's use of episteme "implies an understanding that exists prior to any given situation in which it might be applied" (pp. 24-5). Hence, McComiskey's rereading of the specific Sophist, Gorgias, and the specific sophistic text, exemplifies a "strong," neosophistic approach. This rereading allows us to see how Plato's misappropriation of Gorgias serves to make "Gorgias's rhetorical method based on kairos, or the right moment, seem absurd" (p. 12). McComiskey's similar approaches to the Helen and the Palemedes "provide the epistemological, rather than foundational, grounding for a nascent theory of rhetoric, complete with its negative and positive uses" (p. 12). That is, we, appropriating Gorgias, do not need an epistemological foundation to practice rhetoric. We can read/reappropriate, he argues, the Helen to see where rhetoric...
April 2002
January 2002
2002
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Abstract
Statement on Professional Concerns," by Jeanne H. Simpson, which outlined ideal conditions for writing enter directors and sought to "encourage a trend toward graduate programs that
November 2001
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Professional Writers/Writing Professionals: Revamping Teacher Training in Creative Writing Ph. D. Programs ↗
Abstract
reative writers exist as a group both inside and outside the academic community. Inside academia, the pursuit of creative writing as a graduate degree specialization is typically associated with the M.FA. However, another option, the Ph.D., also exists. I am the recipient of a Ph.D. in English with emphasis in creative writing, alternatively called the Ph.D. in English with creative dissertation. Like many of my colleagues who hold this degree, I also have an M.FA. in creative writing. I entered graduate school as a master's student to become a better writer, and a better scholar. While I was there, I also developed the desire to become a teacher. Told that the M.EA. was not sufficient for a university teaching position (without the all-important multiple books that many positions require), and without significant training or opportunity from my M.EA. program in teaching, let alone in the teaching of creative writing, I entered into a Ph.D. program in English/creative writing with hopes that this program would teach me how to teach in my field. But as a graduate student who did not know which way she might turn (teacher or writer? could I be both?), I was puzzled by the lack of attention on the part of my university to the pedagogy of my field. I took seminars, completed language and oral and written comprehensive examinations, and defended my dissertation-a booklength collection of poems-but heard little about what it might mean to enter a university teaching position, or what teaching creative writing as a professional writer/ teacher might involve. I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones: I took a graduate course in the teaching of composition and then taught composition, feeling well-prepared; I then taught creative writing, feeling less prepared, as a graduate student and postgraduate lecturer. This valuable experience allowed me to recently secure a tenure-track position teaching composition and co-directing a composition
October 2001
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Pedagogy - Volume 1, Issue 3, Fall 2001
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Research Article| October 01 2001 Preparing Graduate Students to Teach Literature: Composition Studies as a Possible Foundation John Schilb John Schilb Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2001) 1 (3): 507–526. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1-3-507 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation John Schilb; Preparing Graduate Students to Teach Literature: Composition Studies as a Possible Foundation. Pedagogy 1 October 2001; 1 (3): 507–526. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1-3-507 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2001 Duke University Press2001 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.
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Graduate education in technical communication should provide students with an expansive view of the field. Toward that end, we offer a three-dimensional framework that represents technical communication as a robust, diverse, complex whole. Although the framework aims towards coherence, it embraces contradiction. That is, the framework represents a totality but does not purport to be the only possible representation. Key to the framework is our belief that the gap between theory and practice can actually be productive. Almost all binaries encourage overly simplistic understandings. But we should not allow the goal of remediating the binary to close off the important tensions that can allow the field to advance. This very gap is actually one of the few sites in which new ideas and approaches can be forged.
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Having come of age before poststructuralism got its toehold on the university, I had the pleasure of discovering uncertainty at my own pace. Even as late as 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania, the war in Vietnam and the one on Philadelphia's streets had done little to disturb the work going on inside our classrooms where eminent literary historians were still trying to hold their own against the new critics. Yet even then, something else was in the offing. Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism-required reading in our proseminar for new graduate students-provided a strange counterpoint to the close readings we were struggling with in other classes under the influence of faculty subversives. Abandoning the particularity of a given poem to meet the anagogic Frye on loftier heights left us breathless, but we were certain, despite our exhaustion and exhilaration, that Frye's more theoretical speculations were not our main business. Neither were historical schemes that omitted the reading of literature. Our main business was the poem itself. Despite what people say now, it never occurred to us back then that we could get our reading of a given poem exactly right, or that there was only one reading, or that everything we needed to know was there in the poem. We did know, however, that some readings were better than others because they accounted for more of what was there. Our readings had an inherent obligation in them to account for a poem's beauty and to consider that beauty as a way of speculating about the poem's meaning. We acknowledged a hierarchy of value and had a yen for aesthetic pleasures. We were not troubled that we knew too
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Assessing Critical Thinking in the Writing of Japanese University Students: Insights about Assumptions and Content Familiarity ↗
Abstract
L2 writing scholars have recently debated the appropriateness of using cultural constructs to enhance the teaching of English. An important aspect of writing, critical thinking, has received considerable attention. Some have suggested that Asians, including Japanese, do not display critical thought in their writing in English. Other researchers claim that Asians display critical thinking abilities differently than Western learners. In addition, they argue that learners from a particular culture are too diverse to make claims about the whole group's thinking abilities. This study proposes a model for assessing critical thinking in the writing of L2 learners to determine whether content familiarity plays a role in critical thinking. Findings of a study of 45 Japanese undergraduate students indicate that the quality of critical thought depended on the topic content, with a familiar topic generating better critical thinking. Results also suggested that differing assumptions between the L1 and L2 culture may lead to misinterpretations of the critical thinking ability of L2 learners.
September 2001
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Abstract
we read Michael Murphy's article, Faculty for a New University, we were surprised and troubled by the story about adjuncts that Murphy purports to tell. Murphy's argument, that a substructure in rhetoric and composition exists but remains invisible and that to recognize such a substructure would cost universities little, is based on a notion of universities that has not existed in most places for a very long time, if ever. Murphy's idea of a teaching track that supports full-time faculty research is based on a conception of a university at a handful of research institutions. Schools that train graduate students, produce the bulk of scholarship in the field of rhetoric and composition, and grant PhDs are about 7 percent of the total number of universities in this country (Phelan 76). To make an argument about adjunct work and adjunct labor without considering the other 93 percent of us seems to us to be thoughtless, at best, and unethical, at worst. The other aspect of adjuncting that Murphy leaves out is, of course, gender. As Theresa Enos writes, When a field has been feminized and when a disproportionate number of its workers are female, that field is devalued and is subject to both disciplinary and gender bias (43). As the latest report on Women in the Profession indicates, women are still more likely than white men ... to obtain jobs in lower-paying institutions .., and they tend to linger
March 2001
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Abstract
Describes an internship program at a two-year college in which graduate students from 13 participating area graduate programs teach in the two-year college and receive training addressing pedagogical issues unique to community colleges, thus being immersed in a world of higher within which the rest of their training occurs.
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Describes the ongoing problem of graduate level preparation for community college teaching, and the need for such faculty. Describes a program in which two-year college and university faculty collaborate to train graduate students as community college faculty. Discusses getting the program started, implementing it, and taking stock.
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Describes the National Center for Community College Education (NCCCE) at George Mason University, which links courses about the history, philosophy, and doctoral student's teaching discipline to prepare community mission of the American Community College with courses within the college professionals. Discusses the university environment, the faculty of NCCCE, the English department and NCCCE, and scholarship and NCCCE graduates.
February 2001
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Challenging Tradition: A Conversation about Reimagining the Dissertation in Rhetoric and Composition ↗
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The Dissertation Consortium, Challenging Tradition: A Conversation about Reimagining the Dissertation in Rhetoric and Composition, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Feb., 2001), pp. 441-454
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Challenging Tradition: A Conversation about Reimagining the Dissertation in Rhetoric and Composition ↗
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January 2001
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My aim here is to write out of the experience of “doing philosophy” with graduate students online through an educational web site template called WebCt. WebCt provides me with the ability to custom design a learning environment in which we can read, think, write and share our experiences, sometimes at great physical distance. Writing is the me-dium of communication for every aspect of my online courses. The specific online course I will describe in this paper is ED 501: Philosophy, Education and Ethics. ED 501 is a core requirement in the Graduate Studies Program in Education at Plymouth State College. At the time of this writing, I am teaching two online sections of this course, each with twenty-five students. I have students in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Honduras and in various areas of the U.S. In the online environment that I’ve designed, “doing philosophy ” is a kind of conduct and that conduct is expressed as writing that we share in various ways. John Dewey wrote in Democracy and Education, “To be the recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed ex-perience. ” Dewey claims that “social life is identical with communica-tion ” and that “all communication is educative ” (1985, p. 8). Although he certainly had in mind face-to-face communication, we accomplish this fact of social life in ED 501 through writing within the online environ-ment. Writing as communication is a form of educative conduct. In a typical semester, ED 501 includes the following writing com-ponents: • personal biographical statements which are made public to the class through posting on the website bulletin board • an e-mail dialog with the instructor which is essentially private, but may be shared with the class as a final project • responses posted on the website bulletin board to core questions and topics about a specific reading
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Pedagogy - Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2001
September 2000
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In the spring of 1998, Richard Leo Enos, as chair of the Lorraine Sherley lecture series, invited James Kinneavy and Linda Ferreira-Buckley to speak to the faculty and students at Texas Christian University. As a graduate student working on a dissertation involving kairos and American literature, I saw in Professor Kinneavy's arrival a significant opportunity to clarify some of the ideas I had been considering. In particular, I had read Kinneavy's article on kairos as a Neglected Concept and saw in his ideas a great potential for the integration of literary and rhetorical studies. Nonetheless, I felt Professor Kinneavy had failed to address fully the transcendental aspect of kairos (best articulated by Paul Tillich) that, I felt, was central to the type of interdisciplinary work I was interested in pursuing. When I approached Kinneavy at TCU, then, I was, truth be told, on a naive mission to right a wrong I felt he had committed. Needless to say, I was quickly disabused of my perception. Professor Kinneavy and I began a conversation on the complexities of kairos, and he carefully illustrated the significance of the term to both rhetoric and literature. Most importantly Kinneavy asserted that kairos was transcendent in that it worked across culture lines and that it offered a subtle way of addressing the situations in which rhetoric is born. Indeed, kairos, he argued, actually explained how rhetoric was born. He felt the term expressed how certain cultural movements and conditions united with special moments to create ripe times for the rhetorical act. In this way kairos was a cornerstone for rhetoric. When Professor Kinneavy left TCU, he and I began a dialogue through email and phone that culminated in the interview printed here for the first time. The interview was conducted at his home in Austin, Texas, in August 1998 and was initially meant simply as background research for my dissertation and an article I was writing. My hope for the interview was that Professor Kinneavy would expand upon his idea of kairos and that he would clarify his position in relation to those of other theorists.
August 2000
May 2000
March 2000
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The arrival of rhetoric in the twenty‐first century: The 1999 survey of doctoral programs in rhetoric1 ↗
Abstract
(2000). The arrival of rhetoric in the twenty‐first century: The 1999 survey of doctoral programs in rhetoric. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 233-242.
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Local histories, rhetorical negotiations: The development of doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition ↗
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Abstract In the last few years, scholars have turned their attention to configuring narratives of rhetoric and composition studies’ disciplinary history. This essay advocates reading the field as a social formation whose move toward professionalization can be understood as a series of rhetorical negotiations. Using the local histories of two institutions that established doctoral programs in English Departments, I consider how local and material factors provide a more nuanced understanding of that field's evolution. This methodology highlights how the current state of a discipline is inextricably bound to the daily work of its members and offers a way to explore the social shapes of rhetoric yet to come.
January 2000
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Interactional Conflicts among Audience, Purpose, and Content Knowledge in the Acquisition of Academic Literacy in an EAP Course ↗
Abstract
The issues of authentic context and authoritative ethos are explored through a study of a graduate student learning to write for mathematics within the context of an English for academic purposes (EAP) course. The student faced conflicts about audience, purpose, and content knowledge as she was required to write math texts within what she perceived was an inauthentic context, an English as a second language (ESL) course. She questioned the purpose of the writing tasks as well as why an ESL instructor was teaching her to write for math, and she addressed the conflicts by writing for the instructor's discourse community and expectations, rather than her own, to earn a grade for the course. The text the student created was thus inauthentic within her own discourse community and lacked her voice of authority. These findings question the validity of EAP courses and raise several issues, especially in terms of the transferability of skills from EAP to content courses.
2000
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Abstract
Like many in our field, I rose up “through the ranks” to my present position as a director of the Writing Center at a small, private college of pharmacy and health sciences. My career path started while I was pursuing an M.A. in English, where I tutored in the university’s Writing Center. Then, when I was back in school to complete a doctorate in education, I once again was given the opportunity to tutor in the university’s Writing Center, and, eventually, to study that Center as the subject of my dissertation. I graduated in the spring of 1996, and by the fall of that year I was hired by my current college to start its Writing Center. Four years later, I am a faculty member in the School of Arts and Sciences and hold administrative responsibility for the entire writing program, as well as for a new initiative on first-year student experience. What a smooth path that narrative above seems to indicate, a path of increasing professional opportunities, from “novice” to “expert,” from tutor to director, from student to faculty member, a “transformation” of sorts that is easily the script that we would write for many in our field. But here is another way of telling that story: My first writing center job came during my second semester of pursuing an M.A. in English/Creative Writing and a high school teaching credential. I would have preferred to be a TA and teach composition in the classroom, but most of my fellow graduate students were experienced teachers and gained the coveted TA positions. Instead, I tutored in the university’s Writing Center for $7 per hour, a rate that did not change in the three years that I worked there. I worked primarily with basic writing students, who came to the Writing Center as a course requirement and who were made to sift through a grammar/usage workbook, completing exercises on modals and subject/verb agreement and nouns and antecedents (which still happens, though now these exercises are computer Sherwood, Steve. “How to Survive the Hard Times.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 17.10 (1993): 4-8.
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In writing centers, technological progress requires collaboration among stakeholders who have varying degrees of expertise with pedagogical applications of instructional technologies. In “Cyberspace and Sofas: Dialogic Spaces and the Making of an Online Writing Lab,” Eric Miraglia and Joel Norris share an impressive list of individuals who collaborated to create and implement Washington State University’s OWL: Bill Condon, Writing Programs Director; Gary Brown, Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning; Lisa Johnson-Shull, Director of the Writing Lab; Norris, Assistant Director of the Writing Lab; Miraglia, Learning Technologies Specialist for the Student Advising and Learning Center; Toby Taylor, an undergraduate student with expertise in graphic design; and Pete Cihak, an undergraduate who focused on North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English 46 (1984): 433-46.
November 1999
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Gives an account in journal format of the author’s experiences teaching writing and literature at a missionary school in Nigeria. Describes difficulties and conflicts of beliefs encountered over a period of time with her colleagues. Presents a poem from one of her teaching assistants and discusses reactions and meanings involved in the different cultures.
October 1999
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“If You Don't Tell Me, How Can I Know?”: A Case Study of Four International Students Learning to Write the U.S. Way ↗
Abstract
This study examined the problems that four international graduate students of various linguistic and cultural backgrounds encountered in the process of adapting to the requirements of discipline-specific written discourses during their first year of studies in the United States. Qualitative data including participant and faculty interviews, observations, analysis of written samples, and reflective journals kept by the participants were collected. The results of the study suggest that international students, who bring different writing experiences with them to U.S. classrooms, need assistance to adjust more easily to the requirements of the new academic environment. This assistance, however, depends on international students and U.S. faculty alike learning to address explicitly how academic writing conventions differ across cultures.
September 1999
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Abstract
Composition (at its best) and feminism work against the grain of conventional institutional practices. Both challenge assumptions and seek to transform ways of thinking, teaching, and learning. Both are complex, containing different agendas and different voices. Feminism and Composition Studies: In Other Words is a feminist project that boldly places at its center differences among women. Topics discussed include American history, politics, language, racism, pedagogy, contingent labor in the teaching of writing, e-mail behavior, and the need for educational and institutional reform. Teachers, graduate students, program administrators, and feminists will find valuable the critiques, theoretical as well as personal, contained in this unusually honest and thought-provoking volume.
July 1999
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Articulates “romantic intellectualism” of what graduate work in English might mean and be. Avoids giving a detailed description of a doctoral program. Intends to convey something that might best be called visioning or dreamwork, and offers it in the hope that it may be helpful to others in their individual and collective visioning and dreaming.
June 1999
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"Tales of Neglect and Sadism": Disciplinarity and the Figuring of the Graduate Student in Composition ↗
Abstract
The efficiency of power, its constraining force have [sic], in a sense, passed over to the other side-to the side of its surface of application. He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.
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“Tales of Neglect and Sadism”: Disciplinarity and the Figuring of the Graduate Student in Composition ↗
Abstract
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May 1999
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Calls for historians of rhetoric to return to the archives. Argues that it is the neglect of training graduate students in standard research methodologies that prevents the field from writing “better” histories of rhetoric. Argues for archival training similar to that given to graduate students in history departments, training tailored to recovering the history of rhetorical practices and instruction.
March 1999
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Abstract
Reviews 233 plutôt: parce que rhéteur) en musicien: les idées sont des thèmes, les sujets sont des instruments. Pierre-Louis Malosse Stephen D. O'Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, ix + 314 pp. Endings, like beginnings, have always fascinated us; thus, speculative accounts of the world's beginning (etiologies) and its ending (eschatologies) have engendered controversial philosophies and gripping narratives. As we approach the end of a millenium, eschatological speculation can only be expected to increase; and thus, Arguing the Apocalypse is a timely contribution to rhetorical history and rhetorical theory. It is also broadly interdisciplinary, carefully researched, and intelligently written. The book's author, Stephen O'Leary, studied comparative religion at Harvard before going on to graduate work in Communication Studies at Northwestern; this book is a revision of his dissertation, and it is marked by the influence of both its director (argumentation theorist Tom Goodnight) and one of its readers (Bernard McGinn, a historian of medieval theology). With a few exceptions, the author has purged his book of the stylistic residues of the much despised "dissertation" genre. Nevertheless, as in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, the first ninety pages will test the readers' mettle; only if they are able to wade through the complexities of the theory will they earn their just reward: two rhetorical histories that are fascinating (and at times, even "page-turners"). Yet there are those first ninety pages. Chapter 1 begins by defining apocalypse—a subset of eschatological discourse that "makes manifest a vision of ultimate destiny, rendering immediate to human audiences the ultimate End of the cosmos in the Last Judgment" (pp. 5-6). Given the powerful appeal of such discourse through the ages, the author suspects that rhetorical theory will be useful in showing how it has shaped human 234 RHETORICA thought and action within particular cultural milieux. Chapter 2 sets out three important topoi of apocalyptic discourse: time, evil, and authority. These topoi are ripe for rhetorical analysis, since they involve not only the intellect but the whole person. O'Leary provides thumbnail sketches of the typical accounts of these three topoi, suggesting that apocalyptic discourse attempts to address certain aporiae that have been left by such accounts. In chapter 3, O'Leary develops the dramatic frames of comedy and tragedy, through which he will view various apocalyptic movements. Traditional Christian eschatology, he argues, accented the comic frame by emphasizing God's complete sovereignty in bringing about the end of time; the divine plan is inscrutible, and we can neither predict the end nor bring it about. But this view still acknowledged an identifiable end, in which evil and time would be no more; and this created the rhetorical space for a "tragic" apocalyptic eschatology, in which God brings the world to a catastrophic close (an event that will be survived only by those who know what to look for, and when to look). "Once an audience has accepted the eschatological argument that evil will be both eliminated and justified in the Last Judgment...their experience of evil will create a hope and expectation for this Judgment that still requires satisfaction" (p. 81). Thus, in apocalyptic rhetoric, "the evils of the present day are pyramided into a structure of cosmic significance" (p. 83). This arouses ever more eager anticipation of the consummation of history. Apocalyptic rhetoric thus tends to be enormously persuasive in the short term. While often blithely dismissed as the ranting of fanatics, it has mobilized thousands, indeed millions, of adherents—a claim that O'Leary will demonstrate in the historical sketches that fill most of the remainder of the book. The next four chapters examine two of the most important apocalyptic movements in the United States. Chapter 4 chronicles William Miller's rise from obscure farmer, to sought-after lecturer, to religious figurehead, to discredited prophet; the chapter also shows why Millerism should be analyzed as a rhetorical movement. In chapter 5, O'Leary examines the particular forms of Millerite argument, showing why they were found persuasive by certain auditors. Chapter 6 jumps ahead some more than a century, examining the more...
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Abstract
Margaret Cavendish has been getting more attention recently as a controversial, prolific, sometimes brilliant, sometimes unintelligible British writer in latter half of seventeenth century.' I approached Cavendish's writings soon after reading essays in Reclaiming Rhetorica, and I noticed in many of her works an intriguing view of composition style. She advocated consistently that fancy and adornment were appropriate stylistic ingredients in scientific and historical prose. This is especially surprising in that Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Thomas Sprat targeted science and history as areas in which fanciful and elaborate writing styles had no place. The rise of moder expository prose, with its idea of mimetic disinterestedness, can, in part, be traced back to these well-known calls for stylistic plainness and purity in seventeenth century. Cavendish, however, was not sympathetic to early moder calls for stylistic plainness. She was well read in natural philosophy and had contact with figures such as Sprat, Hobbes, Walter Charleton, Rene Descartes, and Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's critique of Descartes influenced significantly Cavendish's own antiCartesian, vitalistic view of nature as an intelligent, self-moving, and purposeful entity, not a set of de-animated corpuscles.2 In addition, Cavendish followed closely meetings of Royal Society, and she was well aware of Society's calls for a plain, nearly mathematical style of composition. She attended a meeting in May of 1667, first woman ever to do so, and her attendance drew strong reactions from several members who disapproved of her scientific speculations, her fanciful writing style, and her elaborate clothing as well, as Samuel Pepys notes in his dairy (8:243). Undoubtedly, Cavendish's decision to write scientific and historical prose in elaborate styles was an informed decision, and her style should therefore be seen as a form of dissent directed against her age's escalating positivism. Until recently, Cavendish's writings have been characterized in large part by their excesses, including their proliferating and extravagant stylistic qualities, a characterization that began in her own time. As Henry Perry suggests in his 1918 dissertation on Cavendish, the Duchess's lack of restraint in writing was
January 1999
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Abstract
The authors twice replicated C. Haas and L. Flower's 1988 think-aloud reading study, which found that graduate students used “rhetorical” reading strategies to interpret a passage, whereas first-year college students used such strategies hardly at all. Rhetorical reading strategies use suppositions about the social, cultural, and historical context of the writing. The main intent of the replications was to see whether different outcomes might be found if the passage read dealt with a topic more familiar to first-year students. With the original passage, the results roughly supported Haas and Flower. But with the more familiar topic, the undergraduates generated substantially more rhetorical comments than they did with the Haas and Flower passage. Personal narrative and value-laden commentary were also measured, with older students far outproducing first-year students. The caution for researchers and teachers is to avoid hasty assumptions about underlying language competence without considering contextual factors.
1999
September 1998
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Abstract
Contends that the academy has forgotten the origin of the dissertation and has turned it from a substantive contribution of scholarship to an instrument of evaluation. Argues that continuing to treat the dissertation in this way maintains an unequal power hierarchy of “masters” and initiates–it should be seen as the first serious scholarly monograph a scholar produces.
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Abstract
ot so long ago we attended a meeting of our department's graduate committee, the body that sets the policies and procedures of our large graduate program in English. The typically tedious deliberations were abruptly interrupted when a senior colleague, setting aside the matters being discussed, complained vociferously about a year-old policy on doctoral dissertations. The objectionable policy encouraged dissertation directors to counsel students to think of their dissertations as scholarly books rather than as mere academic exercises. Our colleague insisted that students should not conceive of their dissertations as books because a dissertation, he claimed, is the last important exercise that students will do in their graduate careers. This colleague, an accomplished scholar himself, argued passionately that most graduate students are not yet mature enough to contribute substantively to the types of conversations that professionals engage in, that they in effect need to prove themselves before being allowed to operate on the same plane as professionals. The perspective expressed by this colleague is far from atypical; in fact, it may well be the majority opinion of the graduate faculty in most English departments. This widespread understanding of the function and purpose of the dissertation derives from a kind of collective amnesia in the academy. As we will demonstrate, the academy has forgotten the origin of the dissertation and over the years has turned it from a substantive contribution to one's field to an instrument of evaluation. We argue that continuing to treat the dissertation in this way maintains an unequal power hierarchy of masters and initiates-one that is self-serving at best and unethical at worst. We argue further that it is incumbent upon those of us who direct dissertations to return to the practice of treating the dissertation as the first serious scholarly monograph a scholar produces. Such a practice is especially impor-
June 1998
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Pagan and Biblical Exempla in Gregory Nazianzen. A Study in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics by Kristoffel Demoen ↗
Abstract
Reviews 329 communicating what he had to say to his various audiences. For this reason Anderson is also right in insisting on the use of ancient rhetorical theory and practice in the original languages. I would add that further help may be gained from the commentaries of the fathers of the Church and those later writers who were more familiar with rhetoric than most of use are, e.g. Melanchthon or the Jesuits, and also from modem rhetoric. In addition to a select bibliography and full indices, there is a useful, select glossary of Greek rhetorical terms (pp. 259-302 and 303-14). This is a most welcome contribution to the debate which has suffered a great deal from various kinds of confusion, a book itself well-planned and clearly argued, offering a good deal of help to those who are interested in this controversial subject. It is important because it also raises some general questions as regards the possibilities and limits of rhetorical criticism, and while I disagree with the author on a number of points, I do not hesitate to recommend it to the critical reader. C. Joachim Classen Kristoffel Demoen, Pagan and Biblical Exempla in Gregory Nazianzen. A Study in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics, coll. Corpus Christianorum, Lingua Patrum, 2 (Tumhout: Brepols, 1996) 498 PP· Cet ouvrage a parfaitement sa place dans la collection prestigieuse du Corpus Christianorum, non seulement parce qu'il y côtoie l'admirable Corpus Nazianzenum, mais parce qu'il fait progresser de façon décisive la connaissance des oeuvres de Grégoire de Nazianze et de sa manière de composer. Il comporte deux grands ensembles, un exposé constitué de deux parties, et un répertoire (p. 325-458). Il s'agit d'une analyse rhétorique de Vexemplum, qui va donc au delà du procédé stylistique, pour l'étudier comme moyen de persuasion. Cela implique une enquête sur la tradition rhétorique dont Grégoire est tributaire, ainsi que l'examen des jugements explicites et sous-jacents portés sur les 330 RHETORICA vecteurs des deux courants culturels que fait se rencontrer "le Théologien", l'hellénisme et ses (xûôoi, le christianisme et la Bible. Le livre est issu d'une Dissertation doctorale présentée à l'Université de Gent (Gand) en février 1993. L'introduction part de l'attitude ambiguë de Grégoire à l'égard de la tradition classique, pour esquisser une idée qui prendra toute sa force au terme de l'ouvrage: voulant rivaliser avec les écrivains non chrétiens, Grégoire sépare l'hellénisme de la religion; cette conception restrictive lui donne le moyen de reconquérir l'hellénisme (après la tentative anti-chrétienne de l'empereur Julien); K. Demoen illustre cette reconquête par l'usage rhétorique d'exemples pris dans la mythologie, dans l'histoire et dans la Bible. Les éléments de l'étude sont de nature narrative. Les sources, du côté grec, sont la mythologie, les légendes, l'histoire, les fables et, par ailleurs, les récits bibliques (épisodes historiques de l'Ancien Testament, paraboles du Nouveau Testament). Ne sont retenues que les "histoires" qui ont une fonction exemplaire. Dès le début est proposée une définition du παράδειγμα, distingué de μεταφορά, παραβολή, γνώμη, σύγκρισις, définition élaborée à l'aide des théories antiques analysées dans le premier chapitre (p. 33-50): "l'évocation d'une histoire (de la Bible ou de la tradition païenne) qui s'est réellement produite ou qui n'est pas arrivée, dont la matière ressemble ou est liée au sujet traité, qui est associée implicitement ou explicitement à ce sujet comme argument (preuve ou modèle) ou comme ornement, et qui prend la forme d'une narration, de la mention d'un nom, ou d'une allusion" (p. 25). Le corpus est fait principalement des poèmes de Grégoire, très hétérogènes, les oeuvres en prose intervenant surtout à titre d'illustration ou de confirmation. L'entreprise se situe (p. 26) dans la perspective érudite de la Συναγωγή; kai; έξήγησις de Cosmas de Jérusalem, scholiaste du VIIIe si...