So, I come home today after attending my niece’s graduation…she’s graduating from pre-school…and find a box sitting on my front porch. What was in the box you ask??? Copies of Democracies to Come from Lexington Books!!

That’s right folks…we’re in print. The official pub date is May 28th, but Rachel and I got our advanced copies today. It feels so great…especially after such a long process. The best part of it all is that we’ll be able to bring copies to RSA in Seattle this weekend. We planned to have a little pre-release, party Saturday night anyway…now, we’ll be able to make it official!

While the on-going Democratic primary is a hoot…there is that other candidate out there flying below the media spotlight. In the interest of fair-and-balanced scrutiny, enter Brave New Films:

After a nice five days in the mountains, I am returning to this electronic space to revise a draft of some of my reading. While it is true that the bulk of my time in the mountains was spent doing mountainy things, part of relaxing is having the time to read more of what I want to read. The last several weeks of any semester always take a toll on reading. Or should I say, reading anything other than student papers.

I read the bulk of Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum. I say “the bulk of” because I have yet to read Sections III and IV which can only be found on the included CD-ROM. But, given that the concept of “the book” is still wedded to the printed page, I am willing to say I “read the book” while still quite aware that I have still have two sections of the book to read. In any case, the part of the book that I read has given me a whole lot to think about. As it turns out, I was in the mood for thinking about building, constructing, or, in that lovely neo-capitalist turn of phrase, “growing” our composition program.

snippets:

• On Lynn Bloom’s essay, “Advancing Composition” [in Coming of Age]

I thought it was telling that over the 50 years of discussions seeking to define “advanced composition,” she found that there was a consistent inability to come to a consensus concerning what “advanced composition” or the advanced composition curriculum is or should do. But what I found more interesting is that she notes that “The conventional academic faculty–not TAs and part-timers who teach freshman composition–with an academic orientation are the usual teachers of advanced composition” (Bloom 16); while at the same time, many of the courses and textbooks she surveyed were difficult to distinguish from the first year composition courses. Hogan’s survey of 311 American colleges and universities in 1980 and Shumaker, Dennis, and Green’s 1990 survey revealed at best little connection between “advanced” composition and the first year course (6, 12).

On the one hand, it makes sense why there would be little consensus among composition faculty at different institutions about what advanced composition is given the lack of an established “discipline” until fairly recently. However, what is more puzzling is the lack of connections between the first year course and the advanced course at each institution. That is, it seems puzzling that faculty would not thinking about the relationship between composition and advanced composition when they were creating the course.

That brings me back to the question: who is teaching composition? Bloom’s recognition that “conventional faculty” teach advanced composition, is also a recognition that “non-conventional faculty”–i.e. TAs and contingent faculty–are the one’s teaching composition at most colleges and universities. While certainly not a new observation, this fact only returns us to the unavoidable need of making labor issues an integral part of the construction of any undergraduate composition concentration/major. That is, I think one of the key reasons that there is a persistent disconnect between advanced composition and the first year course is because the same people are not teaching both courses.

And, frankly, the necessity to integrate labor issues into curricular development becomes even more so today. As Marc Bousquet so nicely lays out in How the University Works,

Thirty-five years ago, nearly 75 percent of all college teachers were tenurable; only a quarter worked on an adjunct, part-time, or non-tenurable basis. Today, those proportions are reversed. If you’re enrolled in four college classes right now, you have a pretty good chance that one of the four will be taught by someone who has earned a doctorate and whose teaching, scholarship, and service to the profession has undergone the intensive peer scrutiny associated with the tenure system. (Bousquet 2)

In this world, one can see those calls to “abolish” first year composition courses as an attempt to (as I have argued in another context) out-source service courses.

• Thomas Miller’s essay, “Rhetoric Within and Without Composition” [in Coming of Age]

Reading Miller’s essay felt, at times, like talking to a kindred spirit. I can’t count the number of times I’ve argued along similar lines. At the heart of his essay is a call for civic literacy: “This civic domain is the field of study that I hope rhetoric will reclaim as it expands its frame of reference beyond first-year composition courses” (39). Given that I want to leave campus and go home soon, I’m going to just post this longish passage from his essay that seems integral to developing our CRLS concentration:

A critical awareness of the process of constructing shared beliefs is essential to a civic philosophy of rhetoric that makes sense of what we value. The contradictions contained within this process mark the sites of controversy that can evoke a dialectical awareness of the negotiation of morals and mores. As students examine what is up for debate, how it was called into question, and why it is useful to view the debate from multiple standpoints, they can learn to value critical reflection as a means to practical action, rather than an end in itself. Students can develop this rhetorical stance by reflecting on their expectations about a text and its expectations about them, the experiences that validate and challenge those expectations, and the codifications of those experiences in discursive, moral, and social conventions. In other words, students can learn to question what is assumed, where those assumptions come from, and what gives them authority. If these are to be rhetorical questions, their answers must include action. Critical judgment is generally understood to be the end of inquiry within English departments, as elsewhere in the academy–which is, after all, a product of the Enlightenment–but our own tradition treats critical thinking as a prelude to practical action. (Miller 40, italics mine)

I’m checking out for the day.

Mostly cloudy with breaks of sun, 56 degrees.

…and then there’s this statement by the National Council of Teachers of English:

Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies
Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee
February 15, 2008

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of
purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous
information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

While falling a little short of the kind of project suggested by the multiliteracies folks, NCTE’s statement does support the kind of hybrid/cyborg approach to CRLS. Interesting.

Cloudy, spitting rain, 69 degrees.

The end of the semester is for the most part here. Students are finishing project, papers, and exams. And faculty are knee deep in grading. And as I sit at my desk reading and responding to student papers, I am having my android dreams of the robot army to come.

In particular, I am thinking about hybrids…cyborgs to be more precise. Cyborgs that cross disciplinary boundaries and who neither respect, nor desire, disciplinary fortifications. That does not mean that cyborgs are wishy-washy about their agenda or intellectual commitments. No, cyborgs just start from a different place.

In fact, the whole “literacies” family of CURLS robots is a little underdeveloped in the whole scheme of things. The more I think about it, the more I think that cyborgs are more fitting than robots when it comes to literacies. Take digital rhetorics/literacies, for example. On the one hand, we could develop a robot that would approach its task from the rhetoric angle–and do it quite well. However, digital writing/design bleeds into several other areas–even in the immediate family: desktop pub, info design, and media studies, for example. So, when thinking about designing a “digital rhetoric” robot, it would make more sense to turn to a cyborg.

Such a proposal will be tricky, though. After all, cyborgs do not exactly have a glowing reputation–think Blade Runner, Terminator, and, of course, the Borg–Donna Haraway notwithstanding. But an interesting way of approaching the task at hand, methinks. Diversify the robot army.

Yes, it’s the end of the semester.

Yes, I’m punchy.

Sunny skies, low humidity, 78 degrees.

Ah yes. A robot army. How else defend planet Earth against alien invaders, ninjas, and zombies. Last night, I studied how to befriend an unfamiliar robot. Tonight, I think I’ll look into riding mechanized calvary. What? Yup. You can thank University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign-bound-student Allie for this. Yes, outstanding English major that she is handed me the manual yesterday. I can’t think of a better way to ease my way into summer! Thanks Allie!

I think I am going to adopt “a robot army” to refer to another project I’ve started to work on with one of my comp comrades. What is this mysterious project worthy of Area 51 designation you ask??? Well, I’ll confess from the onset that it’s not going to be all that interesting to anyone who is not a comp/rhet geek (or at least an academic geek). The project is to build a comp/rhet concentration within our English major.

We now have four, count ‘em four, composition and rhetoric faculty in our department and we’ll be posting a job for #5 in the fall. This is good. But hiring new composition faculty has posed other questions for me, namely: What kind of professional opportunities will there be for new faculty? What kind of courses will they want to develop and where will those courses fit in the overall picture of our program? What is the identity of our little composition-engine-that-could?

So, for the past several months I’ve been poking around looking for info on undergraduate composition majors and concentrations. Most recently I’ve been making my way through Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum. and getting more and more convinced of the importance of an intellectual and institutional space for our composition program. As I wrote and rewrote the previous sentence, I grappled for how to phrase what I’m getting at. I started with “an intellectual and institutional center,” then “focal point.” But neither of those (not to mention the multiple versions of that sentence that are now part of the virtual shadow) really made sense.

You see, I think the most accurate way to describe what we have tried to do in the composition program is to emphasize “conversation” as the model of our program. That is, there is not one direction, one set of principles, but an agreement as to the importance of talking about and discussing student writing, composition and rhetoric as a field, and different ways of approaching our work. A program that encourages differences.

That’s how I’ve thought about it anyway. But, to be honest, it’s not an approach that we’ve sat down and agreed upon or committed to. Our comp/rhet conversation is an approach that developed more or less organically…perhaps indicated some of the implicit commitments we all shared as individuals and members of the bigger comp/rhet conversation. Several of us have developed courses, revised old ones, and done some pretty cool stuff in our classes. Two of us regularly use blogs for example. We have weekly composition conversation and will begin year three of our reading group next fall. So, all in all we’ve been a pretty active bunch.

But, for me , I find myself wanting to take the next step and formalize (not a good word) our inquiry around a concentration/minor/major of some sort. Part of this has to do with seeing some of our best students take an interest in composition and rhetoric after taking classes with one of us. Part of of has to do with the kind of shift in literacies that Kathleen Blake Yancey pointed out. And I think it would be fun. Yes, fun. Comp/rhet geeks like this kind of stuff.

Anyway, I should get back to grading. Last week of the semester this is (that’s my Yoda dialect). More soon!

I’ve been listening to Lori McKenna’s The Kitchen Tapes pretty much all morning. I love this album. It’s the kind of album that sends me right to deep reflection. Music that’s good for the soul…at least in my book.

If you’ve never listened to Lori McKenna, I can’t think of a better place to start than The Kitchen Tapes…with a couple of cautions. First, there’s a chance that if you listen to The Kitchen Tapes first, her other albums won’t measure up in the same way. That’s because The Kitchen Tapes are just that–McKenna, her guitar, and a little recorder in her kitchen in Stoughton, MA. Here’s part of her description from the liner notes:

Do you believe in accidents? Well, to me this album is just that. It happened over the course of a few days while sitting in my kitchen with a bunch of new songs swirling in my head. I got out my minidisc recorder, a cheap little microphone, and my notebook, filled with a writing binge I went on just after finishing my last album, and then I started to play…This is me in my kitchen, at my table with the phone ringing, the TV buzzing, and my kids running around. These recordings are far from perfect, but they were never meant to be. I’d like to think that their imperfections are their beauty.

And they are just that…beautiful in their lack of polish and perfection. McKenna’s confessions, revelations, and admissions are that much more painfully beautiful on The Kitchen Tapes.

Don’t get me wrong…her other music has the same qualities, but the polish of production on Paper Wings and Halo, Pieces of Me, or Bittertown (which includes some of the songs from The Kitchen Tapes) softens the edges a bit. Matter of fact, earlier this week I was listening to Bittertown and had to decide if I wanted to descend into the reflective place to which The Kitchen Tapes always call me.

The second caution is that if you are not a fan of folk/roots/alt country you may not have much of a tolerance for McKenna. In my mind her writing is in the best traditions of these genres–that is, the music is embedded in the contours of the everyday and its stories. And…I should throw this in as well…if any mention of religion or faith causes you to yell “conservative garbage!” at the top of your lungs (like you may have done upon a first listen to Sinead O’Connor’s Theology), save yourself the risk of high blood pressure and don’t bother listening. Personally I love her honesty and her indebtedness to her history and community.

So, I give you my pitch for a soundtrack for this gray and rainy April day.

Two things always happen at this time of year. First, one week of classes left in the spring semester, I begin thinking about my classes in the fall. Second, it’s at least 90 degrees in my office. So, here I sit…planning my graduate class for the fall and, well, sweating.

This fall I am teaching ENG 502 Introduction to English Studies: Traditions, Boundaries, and Change. This will be the first time the course has been taught. My colleague Jennifer Bottinelli and I designed it to be one of the two required courses for our redesigned MA (the other being literary criticism). I’m very excited about teaching this course and reading/rereading the texts. It’s the kind of class that I’ve always wanted to teach…and the fact that it will be our graduate students’ introduction to the degree puts a big smile on my face.

The official syllabus for the class has an extensive bibliography (way too much to actually read in a semester)…I’m beginning to narrow in on the texts I’ll be using…at least a draft of a required book list. Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Berlin, James. Rhetoric, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2003.
• Downing, David, Claude Mark Hurlbert, and Paula Mathieu, eds. Beyond English Inc.: Curricular Reform in a Global Economy. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2002.
• Graff, Gerald. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.
• McComiskey, Bruce, ed. English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline(s). Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2006.
• Scholes, Robert. The Rise and Fall of English. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1998.
• Yagelski, Robert and Scott Leonard, eds. The Relevance of English: Teaching that Matters in Students’ Lives. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2002.

That’s what I am thinking right now at least. I like pairing Graff and Scholes, especially since Scholes begins his text with a reference to the importance of Graff’s book:

The rise of English in American colleges is now a familiar part of the story, thanks especially to such books as Richard Ohmann’s English in America and Gerald Graff’s Professing Literature. My version of this story will be similar to theirs, but with some different emphases that enable me to propose another ending for this tale that is still in progress. (Scholes 2-3)

And I like this pairing because 1) it enacts the kind of “conversation” approach to English Studies that the course is designed to foreground; and, 2) it connects this required course with an established discussion in the field of English Studies. That is, the fact that Scholes is taking the study of the institutional and curricular history of English as a given, helps make a case for why we are requiring our students to take ENG 502.

I am trying to be cautious not to overload the reading list…especially since this course has several goals in addition to looking the construction of “English Studies.” In any event, just (re)reading some of these texts is helping remind me of what drew me to English and my field, rhet/comp to begin with. That’s a good feeling.

For now, I am going to call it a day and head home (and change out of these sweaty clothes…yuk!). Current (outside) temperature, 75. Partly cloudy. Feels like summer.

I don’t know what got me thinking about this…must be that feeling that summer is on it’s way. This one’s for the whole crew back in Syracuse (now spread around the world). Give ‘em the Gas Face!