Henze, Selzer, and Sharer (2007): 1977: A Cultural Moment in Composition
1977: A Cultural Moment in Composition by Brent Henze
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
1977 is an excellent history of the composition program at Penn State, which Henze, Selzer, and Sharer argue is a justified history to tell because too often histories of composition are more national and told in grand narratives. In a way, the history of Penn State’s composition program in the 1970s “mirror[s:] (and complicate[s:])” the national debate in composition studies (86).
Henze, Selzer, and Sharer begin by providing cultural and social context for their history (Chapter 2), and then proceed through the book to narrow their focus. Chapter 3 offers a the context of English Studies in 1977, and Chapter 4 overviews the national conversation about composition studies in the mid-to-late 1970s. These two narratives are pretty familiar to most in composition studies, and Henze, Selzer, and Sharer move through it quickly before focusing on Penn State. One nice aspect of these two chapters is the sidebars, in which prominent composition scholars from other programs provide their own views of the state of the field in the 1970s.
Chapter 5 examines closing the changing face and the new problems of Penn State’s English department in the 1970s: budgetary woes, a changing student body (more nontraditional students), declining number of English majors, and of course, critiques of the two composition courses (English 1 and 3). Henze, Selzer, and Sharer outline how the courses often did not have a shared design and were critiqued for not preparing students for college writing.
Chapter 6 is a discussion of how the English department attended to these problems. Professors Wilma Ebbitt and Douglas Park were instrumental in bringing about certain changes: a shift from English 3 as a literary course, changes from a more current-traditional paradigm to a process-oriented paradigm, a move toward exposition and argument and away from expressivism, the development of a committee for freshman composition, and a new teacher orientation.
“Humor is also a way of saying something serious”
This is good for a few laughs (and maybe even tears):
how we construct the “other” as the biased ones
After Judge Walker’s decision that Proposition 8 in California is unconstitutional, the rumors have begun: Is he gay? For instance, here’s a clip from CNN (via Pam’s House Blend):
On PHB, Pam Spaulding asks, “In what universe is the sexual orientation of any judge relevant to ANY case?” A justified question. Of course, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how a judge interprets the constitution, evidence, law, and case precedent.
But what matters in a heterosexist society is that “gay” or “homosexual” is painted as the interested party, and that heterosexual is painted as the objective party — or, more accurately, assumed to be objective because it doesn’t have to be “painted” that way. Not that other issues of difference are “the same,” but we can see a similar response when Sotomayor was going through hearings with Congress: her race mattered. Especially when she mentioned that she would have different experiences with which to interpret cases than others, despite the fact that, if I’m remembering accurately, Alito had said something similar about his own experiences: they mattered in his interpretation. But the fundamental difference, in our cultural imagination, is how close to the center, how privileged, someone is. Someone who is not White, or someone who is not straight, must have an interested opinion, an agenda, a bias of some sort. Straight white men are the ones who can be impartial (excepting, of course, the frequent, almost ubiquitous, accusations of “liberal bias” or “conservative bias”).
FYC into the archives
In the spring, an archival librarian gave a presentation to instructors in the composition program here about using the university’s Special Collections in composition courses. My friend Sarah closed out her first year rhetoric and composition course with an archival research essay in the spring, and when I talked to her, I absolutely loved her ideas, so for the last assignment this summer in my FYC course, I assigned an archival research essay. I thought I’d write a post and share some ideas and the process.
Rationale
I saw this project as accomplishing the following objectives:
- Students engage with research out of curiosity instead of thesis-chasing. With most research assignments, no matter how much I stress starting with curiosity, many students start out out with a thesis, or a vague idea of a thesis, and gear their research toward that thesis from fairly early in the research process. This can lead to selectively choosing counter-arguments (it’s easier to just ignore the ones that they can’t figure out how to rebut); finding “facts” to back up an argument, at the expense of focusing on the intellectual conversation and debate; and limiting invention to what one already believes and knows. Of course, I’m painting with a large brush here, and these problems don’t have to arise, but they’re pretty frequent. With this project, I asked students to enter historical and archival research with curiosity, and to develop an argument with what they find, rather than start with an argument. And students had to do this because they were dealing with material they were largely unfamiliar with.
- Students develop a larger sense of invention. Throughout the term, I try to stress that writers look at the world as writers, and when they see things, they think about how it fits into arguments, debates, and discussions and what they might have to say about it. I especially stress this with the rhetorical analysis assignment: that the rhetorical analysis is not just an analysis, but an analysis about something interesting used to make a claim or argument. I try to model this by modeling my own curiosity and engagement with artifacts I see. This assignment helps to model this more: find something you’re curious about, and develop various connections and ideas about it.
- Students develop a sense of history here, perhaps denaturalizing what they assume is “normal” and ahistorical Penn State student behavior; additionally, students see that the past is something that is important to the present and can be used for a variety of purposes. Our research in the archives was limited to student traditions at Penn State, which allowed students to see how students lived and experienced Penn State in the past. I ask them to make the history they are researching important to readers and to make an argument about it, or to use the past to make an argument about now.
- Students have fun. This was, of course, important. I mean, this stuff is interesting!
Set up
The archivist and I met two times before the project started (of course, we had met earlier about her presentation to composition instructors). During our first meeting, we discussed a possible time line for research, how we’d have students initially visit the archives, what resources were available, and what topics were possible for student papers. We decided to limit the research to student traditions, and have the archivist select materials to have on a special cart for the course that students could request to see when they came in. We set up a time line: I’d introduce the paper topic, then students would visit the archives as a class, where they were introduced to a special exhibit on student traditions, briefly shown an overview of the materials available to them, shown how to use the online archives for the student newspaper and yearbooks, and shown models of the types of research questions they might ask. Then students had to visit the archives on their own, develop a proposal, email it to me. I put some books on course reserves for secondary sources, and over the next week, students turned in two research logs as they researched and worked on their papers. I also conferenced with each student about their paper; some came with questions about their research or the paper, others with starts of drafts. What was amazing about these conferences was, for the first time ever, every student came with clear, prepared questions about their paper or topic.
How it went
These papers were highly successful, I think, in both student engagement with their topics and in paper quality. Students researched a variety of aspects of student traditions at Penn State:
- The history of the Nittany Lion mascot
- Gendered regulations for young women at Penn State
- Cross dressing at Penn State in the 1890s
- Competitions between classes in the early 20th century (called class scraps)
- Dances in the early 20th century
- Rules that freshmen were expected to follow in the early 20th century
Students struggled with figuring out how to make what they were researching matter to readers. I encouraged them to consider not just that this would be interesting, but why it would be interesting for students to read about today. Some came up with strong arguments about gender norms today, or about school spirit. Some waxed nostalgic, or made claims about the meaning of certain traditions. The struggle over how to make this matter was productive: students showed patience with themselves and the research, explored and discussed different approaches, and wrote successful papers.
We spent the last two days of class with brief, informal presentations about their research, requiring a visual (students could take pictures of what they saw in the archives). And these were a lot of fun: we all learned a lot about Penn State history and student life history, and students got a chance to share what they learned and what they thought about what they learned.
Overall, I think my students had a lot of fun with this topic, and so did I. I asked students for feedback on the assignment, and most of them praised some aspect of it: the helpfulness of visiting the archives, the interesting topics available, the fun it was exploring student history at Penn State.
The assignment sheet
Here’s a PDF of the assignment sheet as I developed it for summer term (I took off the librarian contacts in case they don’t want them up on the blog): Archival Researched Essay assignment sheet
Zizek on charity consumption
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, an analysis by Slavoj Zizek about charity consumption. Fantastic:
Jon Stewart on “Ground Zero Mosque” critiques
Jon Stewart questions the claims of conservative pundits and politicians who don’t want the new Muslim Center near the World Trade Center location:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Municipal Land-Use Hearing Update | ||||
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O’Hara (1999): The Philosophy of Punk
The Philosophy of Punk: More Than Noise by Craig O’Hara
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In The Philosophy of Punk, Craig O’Hara draws from numerous punk bands and writings by punks to outline a general philosophy of punk aesthetic, ethics, and activism. He is clear to articulate that he is discussing a certain “brand” (my word) of punk rock: not generic, more consumption-oriented punk, but rather the more “authentic” punk of the late 70s and early 80s. This punk, he argues, was importantly about “tak[ing:] on responsibility” (39). While punk music involves rage, anti-authority views, and anti-conformity (27-28), O’Hara argues that punk ethics was (and is) one of responsibility.
He blames mass media for misrepresenting (and misrecognizing) punk as violent, negative, and a trend, as well as too simply equating punks with skinheads. Instead, O’Hara urges that in order to understand punk, one must go to the “primary sources” (61). I fully agree with his reading of media representation, and in the scope of his book, it makes sense, but this could have more analytical force if he didn’t rely on the idea that there is somehow a way to accurately represent oneself.
O’Hara’s discussion takes force as he describes punk’s anarchist ethics—and how this is related to responsibility. Anarchy isn’t a matter of checking out because “personal anarchy is elitist, unanarchistic, and counter revolutionary” (87). Those who ascribe to personal anarchy, but have “resign[ed:] himself to the fact that other people are not capable of ruling themselves” might still be participating and spreading ideas, but have given up on the ideals of anarchy (87). To O’Hara, anarchy is admitting responsibility: not simply “no laws,” but “no need for laws” (97).
O’Hara’s last few chapters deal with sexism, homophobia, environmentalism, vegetarianism, and Straight-Edge, and are pretty good discussions, though quickly sped through. For the purpose of the book, though, I thought they were developed enough—though I think the book was a bit too celebratory of anti-sexism and the inclusion of women in the punk movement, if only because a lot of punk can be masculinist and not very inviting to women. O’Hara is claiming to discuss a specific group of punks (“authentic” punks), but at times, seems to idealize them. Perhaps this is because he is trying to outline a philosophy (instead of, say, an anthropology/sociology/rhetoric) and is trying to discuss the ideals and beliefs of punks.
Meetspaces: Going the Way of Newspapers
Diesel Sweeties raises an interesting point, that media studies and rhetoric don’t seem to focus on as much as the perishing newspaper: how much are our public physical spaces changing due to online behavior and sociality? I’ve read a number of news stories over the last four years about bars closing down (particularly gay bars) and the blame tends to go (whether accurately or not) to online networking and hookup culture.
Particularly, a few posts ago, I mentioned the politics of spaces. A friend and I had a conversation about how gay male social and sexual behavior seemed different here now than five years ago (his comparison) and I noted how it was much different here than in Oregon. Too small of a sample size, but there does seem to be a privatization of public sex culture — moving online and into bedrooms, rather than public spaces (the stuff that Tim Dean so eloquently discusses in Unlimited Intimacy).
nuclear detonation infographic video
via the Blogora, an excellent video infographic that shows the number of nuclear bomb detonations between 1945 and 1998. The number is staggering. If, like me, you’re fairly young, you might assume that the United States hasn’t detonated a bomb since before you were born (1980 in my case). Um, wrong. This video is particularly interesting, I think, for the way it remediates old-school videogames (I couldn’t help but think of Atari) in its visuals and sounds. The audio, particularly, is both eerie because of the ticker and melodious when many bombs go off in the same second (increasing the eeriness).
Hitler rants about iPad
You might have already seen this, but I just did, and I love it:
I’m teaching with the iPad in technical writing in the fall (checking one out to each student). Should be an interesting experiment.
