Articles for volume Composition Studies 35.1 (Spring 2007) are in pdf on the course website:
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english640/PDFs/Composition%20Studies/
In addition, you should take a look at the guidelines for 2 kinds of submissions:
http://www.compositionstudies.tcu.edu/submissions.html (regular stuff)
http://www.compositionstudies.tcu.edu/coursedesigns.html (course designs!)
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Composition Studies
Posted by Susan Romano at 9:50 AM
Labels: Composition Studies
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I've just finished the CS articles and want to spend some time thinking in more detail about the rhetorical methods and writing decisions consistent in the conversations. I do have a couple of initial observations:
1) Almost without exception, the authors of these articles appear to be "apologizing" to the audience, or perhaps "justifying" is a better term, for the existence of the relatively new professional writing discipline.
2) Many of the ethos arguments are drawn from other disciplines (e.g. philosophy, Lit, etc.).
Interesting! I hadn't noticed the apologizing--and will take a second look (probably this move is invisible to me because I'm so used to it). Can you point me to a specific paragraph in one of the articles?
As for drawing on other disciplines--yes! I hope we can talk about this either here or on Thursday. My example (if this is what you mean) would be the Peeples article that uses chronos/kairos and strategy/tactic as framework for talking about program development. These are terms that rhetoricians would likely recognize, but why use them (is the question)? Why not just lay out the scenarios by using corporate language, say: longterm, orderly planning (for chronos/strategy) for opportunistic development (for kairos/tactic)?
Moreover, if you're new to the field and don't have such terms readily at hand, can you still write something appealing?
This issue of Composition Studies presents a “state of the nation” in terms of writing programs through solicited articles on the subject. I like the term Rebecca Moore Howard uses to describe what she sees as a possibility for writing majors—curricular “activism”. The article is interesting to me because she challenges several constraining notions: 1) the idea that writing is a skill not a discipline, 2) the idea that our students are not skilled writers, and 3) that our students therefore simply need remediation. This article does not begin with an anecdote or any kind of recognizable attention getter, but plunges in to the ideas the author is forwarding. This article touches on themes that are echoes throughout the journal. It also seems to be one of the “heavyweight” articles. I don’t know the name, but the author refers to her own work several times in the article. This journal included several large articles that didn’t seem like a graduate student could write and publish, but there also seem to be opportunities for shorter articles, which might be appropriate for graduate student submissions.
The introduction explains that “this special issue functions both as a record of ‘where we are’ as a discipline right now..." (12). I’m particularly interested in this issue as it directly relates to the argument I’m trying to make in my dissertation.
I’m not really seeing the ‘apologizing’ move that Greg cites—although this is definitely intriguing and a specific example or two would be helpful. I saw the approach more as not spending a lot of time justifying why we need to have a ‘writing studies’ major (not setting up the background info as much) but going directly from the assumption that we do need one and immediately addressing the problem of how might we ‘imagine’ a writing studies curricula at the undergrad level(the Downs and Wardle article in CCC ‘do writing skills transfer,' which we initially started discussing last week, addresses this topic as well).
I also noticed the visual presentation of information in ‘Rewriting the Humanities.' I haven't really seen this as much with the exception of Kairos and perhaps something like Technical Communication Quarterly or Technical Communication Today.
I read CS after CCC, and I found the contrast interesting. In terms of style and tone, CS strikes me as casual and laidback. I think this is in part because of the language and word choice. There isn't much use of broad or abstract rhetorical terms. Instead, each piece reads almost like a conversation. Reading this journal reminds me of listening to an academic discussion you might hear among scholars who view each other as peers. The writers don't seem to feel the need to justify rhetoric and composition studies as a discipline, taking for granted that its readership feels the same. The writing is approachable and straightforward, often (at least in this issue) relating back to personal experience. CS seems inclusive, inviting readers to feel a part of the conversation the writers offer.
I posted too soon! I had two comments left to make. The first observation I had when I began reading CS was that it seemed less "academ-ese". Whereas CCC contributors throw around some pretty weighty terms, CS writers seem not to. There's nothing wrong with either method. Even when CCC articles use very specific and heavy terminology, the author defines his or her terms for readers. It just contributes to a different sort of tone, as I discussed before my untimely blog send-off.
I also noticed that although CS submissions tend to forgo an anecdotal or epithet opening. Instead, most of the pieces open with a contextualized overview of the conversation the writer wishes to enter. In my notes, I also noted the presence of the "Reflections/Projections" section. This seems to suggest a "friendly" type of journal that encourages writers to draw on personal experience.
Composition Studies seemed to be more of a global look at Comp/Rhetoric, instead of just focusing on the classroom. I was very interest to read the articles, often forgetting the real reason I was reading them.
I noticed a few things:
1. The articles seemed to give a roadmap to the article and the direction through the paper. Often by the second or third paragraph, the author has laid this out for us.
2. I read the 'apology/justification' part as necessary to defining the audience and giving reasons in support of the paper/its findings etc. This would make sense, since every article is not important to every reader.
3. I felt that the articles were right on the pulse of rhet/comp programs. Maybe that is because I am just now becoming aware of these issues and this discussion. The issue of English majors as the overarching theme of the articles seems timely.
4. Several of the articles also use a narrative and detailed description of their program. This is useful to understanding the author's point and their subsequent 'gameplan.'
Also, this issue seemed to have a round table discussion feel- similar to the College English issue we looked at. Everyone had an opportunity to address the point from their own experiences, department and interest.
I agree with Dylan's synopsis of the 'State of the Nation' for comp/rhet studies.
I looked closely at RE-WRITING THE HUMANITIES! THE WRITING MAJOR'S EFEECT UPON UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES IN ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS.
I was interested in the topic from the first sentence. Carpini starts reflecting on the switch from the 'universal' 1 year writing requirement to the genre based/practical writing. We have seen this switch at UNM too! Just as students want to learn more about the discussion going on in their respective areas, he sees this happening for students in the humanities, in general, and in specific, English. He refers to this as 'writing studies.' Then he relates an anecdote about a rhetoric forum, to illustrate his point.
Then he moves to defining a 'writing major' at the undergrad level. He also relates the full spectrum of curriculum from practical to theoretical (and how they interrelate). He seems to indicate strength in the professional writing program idea because of its marketablility but weakness or erosion in literary studies for the same reason. Yet, humanities students are interested in being 'professional' in their field and desire to learn the skills needed in being a 'professional' humanities scholar. I like that he uses boxes with the definition of the programs and looks at the program descriptions from several university programs in Literary Studies/PW/hybrid of the two. He goes through several examples of overlap and the positives and negatives of the 'writing major' on humanties curriculums. He ends with advocating this hybrid and acceptance of these students into traditional humanties studies. I think the article resonated with me because of the pw courses I have taken and the differences (positive and negative) that inevitably come up with collegues in the Dept.
I agree with others that the articles in this journal are more casual than some of the others. They're easy to read—you don’t have to look up every other word or interpret every sentence, but they’re still academic. It’s definitely aimed at serious composition students and professionals. Someone studying, say, math or engineering wouldn't get as much out of the articles as those of us in R&W. The tone of the journal is not overly formal, but it takes itself seriously—there’s room for some humor and personal anecdotes, but both are used sparingly.
The subgenre for most, if not all of these articles is reports on teaching or program development. This whole issue is devoted to professional writing program development, so that might seem obvious, but even the titles in other issues seem to fall mostly into this category.
It seemed to me that there was a lot of variety in the opening paragraphs. One starts off with a personal anecdote, and two or three others “set the stage,” describing a setting or a meeting with colleagues to discuss their writing programs. One article starts with an epigraph containing a quote by Aristotle, and another starts with three epigraphs, one of which is a student blog post. Others jump right into the subject matter, explaining their position on the topic or telling us what they’re going to write about. Two use quotes from other authors, presumably experts in the field.
I think most of these articles assume that readers are conversant in the controversy over the value of professional writing programs and the challenges English departments at universities face in keeping students interested and in validating the academic value of what they teach. They also assume that readers have a background in rhetoric and/or composition studies.
I also noticed the visual represention of information in the Carpini article that Candice mentioned. It was definitely typical of academic articles in this field, but I'm not sure that it was especially effective either. The info on writing programs was interesting but could have been put into an appendix instead of being stuck in the middle of the article. But I didn't really get the other "figures." They were poorly designed and not very thoroughly explained.
One of the articles made reference to transitioning from PreK-12th grade to college R&W, which made me think I might have a shot at getting something on my topic published here.
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