Monday, October 30, 2006

The Sacred, the Profane, and the Distant Pen-Pal

Brandt says in Chapter 5 "The Sacred and the Profane" that "[w]riting [as represented in the interviews] appeared to develop in situations and out of psychological motivations that were saliently, jarringly different from those surrounding reading. . . . Writing was more often recalled in the context of humiliation and anxiety. Compared to reading, writing seemed to have a less coherent status in collective family life, and much early writing was remember as occurring in lonely, secret, or rebellious circumstances" (154). In contrast, reading was often communal, shared, and enjoyed by the interview subjects. They spoke of being read to by parents and grandparents. They spoke of sharing texts with families. The memories seemed more pleasant and inclusive.

The chapter then proceeds to discuss interviewees' experiences with writing, and the reported results are quite interesting. Writing for the interviewees was often associated with work and day-to-day business of bills and correspondence. Johnny Ames, the participant we encountered in an earlier chapter, speaks of his grandmother's use of writing as a necessity. She wrote down figures about workers, about how much cotton was picked, etc, but Johnny, who closely observed her do this work, was not encouraged to write. He repeats: "...there was no encouragement for me to do that." Most of the interviewees report similiar responses--that they were not encouraged and, in some cases, were actively discouraged from writing. There are a few exceptions, of course, but the stories of writing are more ambivalent.

A number of the interviewees hid their writing, concealing it from others. Oneinterviewee kept her diary in a secret place: "There was an old dilapidated garage in the back of one of the houses we lived in and the ceiling was coming down, I used to keep my diary up there. I'd write in there and keep it up there so nobody would see it" (Krauss qtd in Brandt 162). A number of interviewees wrote down their thoughts and feelings about negative experiences, then destroyed them so no one could punish them or retalitate for what they said. Brandt notes that men and women of color and white women often poured out their feelings on the page and then destroyed them. "Using writing as a 'a purge' or 'vent' (frequently used expressions) was especially common among white and black women and among black men that I interviewed. This writing tended to occur at times of crisis: death, divorce, romantic loss, incarceration, war" (162). Writing is done in secret to relieve tension, work out thoughts and feelings, and to say what cannot be said in verbal discourse.

And guess what: "Judgments about one's writing, generally rendered by teachers, stayed in the memory as sore points or keen accomplishments" (166). Teachers figure prominently as sponsors of literacy. School literacies produced memories of writing that underscored an "ambivalence about writing" (163). Younger interviewees remember more experiences with creative writing, while older interviewees remembered expository reports (163-64). Writing assignments were often subjugated to reading assignments in the school setting. As Brandt puts it, citing Shirley Brice Heath," Linking writing to reading was a way to curtail or control writing, not necessarily to develop it on its own terms" (166). In other words, much writing in school settings is in service of reading.

While reading is avidly sponsored by schools, literacy campaigns, and families, [w]riting enjoys no such broad sponsorship" (167). So by Brandt's account, reading is sacred: "The sacred status of reading--established through the once commanding influence of religion--still winds its way into family relationships, gift buying, and secular literacy campaigns" (167).

Writing is consigned to the profane status: "The profane status of writing, with its origins in the same hierarchical structures, survives even as writing has been absorbed steadily into the interests of the economy, sanctioned more regularly in school, and with the mass acquistion of computers that was just beginning at the end of the twentieth century, practiced as a form of information gathering and entertainment" (168). This last part of the quotation made me wonder about writing in an era of blogging, web pages, IM, email? The everyday writing that many of us do is digital writing.

I also wonder if writing is really profane. Part of me agrees with Brandt's metaphor, but I also want to reject it and substitute another. I do see how writing is not as valued and more ambivalently performed and judged I see how the status of writing programs--places that sponsor writing--is seen as lesser than that of others (remember our discussions of Miller, Crowley, Holbrook, and Connors). But there is also a way in which writing, too, is sacred in others ways if one operates within a particular epistemology of writing where writing is viewed as knowledge-creation, exploration, inquiry, etc. So I guess I'd like to see writing not as sacred or profane, but perhaps as a form of action and enactment.

Brandt urges us to consider how understandings of writing are conditioned by people's complex histories with writing: "We must understand better the histories that are compelling literacy as it is lived" (168). What are our histories in 601?

Writing seemed essential to me from a very young age. I viewed reading that way, too (5 books a week from the public libraray every week), but writing had a special status for me. It seemed to me to be a way of reaching out beyond my world to that of others. As a rural kid in a small town with few opportunities for travel (my family rarely took vacations), I became an avid seeker of pen-pals. I sent letters to schools all over the country when I was in the fifth grade. I looked up the names of cities in distant states, sought out their populations and zip codes and wrote letters to schools seeking pen pals in the fifth grade. I acquired several pen pals from these open-ended query letters. Some wrote for a few months and other for a few years. One pen pal (from West Concord, Mass) and I wrote for thirteen years before lapsing into silence. I sent her stories and poetry. At one point, she sent me her travel journal. Not only were we writing each other, but we were sharing our other writings. I moved and she moved and we lost touch. I've tried to look her up since on the internet, but I can't find her.

I was compelled to writing, to correspondence by a desire to address others outside my own community. I wanted to hear about other kid's lives. I wanted to tell my stories and have an audience for my writing. I also was curious about the eastcoast. Right as I started writing Kirstin (her name), we were on the cusp of the bicenntenial year (1976). I was interested in all the newscasts about the Boston area. I wrote to West Concord, Mass to find a pen-pal because I wanted to correspond with someone who was living in the midst of all the historical markers of the east: Lexington (the shot heard round the world), Boston, Plymouth Rock, etc. Writing seemed a form of travel and teleporation. It got me somewhere else for awhile.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Globalizing and Industrializing Literacies

Trish's blog does a great job of reporting out the Hunt and Day interviews. I'd like to take up a question Trish poses about context. My take will be to address the agricultural economy throughout the 20th century in the U.S.

Part of me wondered where the thirties fit into all of this for Day (and Brandt)? This was the era of the dustbowl and displacement of thousands upon thousands of farm families in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and other states (the top soil literally blew off farms due to over-farming and lack of crop rotation). Franklin Delano Roosevelt came along and created the New Deal to regenerate the US economy in the midst of the Great Depression and part of the package included farm subsidies and price supports for specific commodities like milk, wheat, corn, etc.

As I read Brandt's account of Hunt and Day, I wondered where all that context could fit in here. A reader looking at Day could assume all was hunky-dory in the ag economy throughout the mid-part of the century. Yet this is not really the case. Things were good in the forties b/c of the war, but one's economic fortunes really depended upon what kind of crops you were growing and whether or not you could count on subsidies. Weather, as always, is a factor, too. You can have your whole crop rained out or hailed out if you are growing wheat, apples, or other commodities exposed to unstable weather conditions As my brother always says, being a farmer is like being a high-stakes Vegas gambler. You can lose it all in thirty seconds of hail.

Also, a lot of family farms were highly diversified (multiple crops) and fairly self-sufficientuntil the fifties (which helped prevent total financial loss b/c if one crop failed, you could maybe count on another). Then things started to shift toward monocultures (farming one large commodity crop like corn, wheat, etc).

Granted, Day came of age a bit later in the century, but the agricultural economy was not as stable nationally as it might have been in rural Wisconsin where Day was/is located. The dairy industry is heavily subsidized, so government price supports mean that WWII era dairy farmers and post-WWII dairy farmers could rely on the govt making up the difference in price. So in some ways, there is another layer of sponsorship that needs to be acknowledged for Day--the industry she wrote about as an ag journalist, the small family farm dairy industry, was heavily subsidized by the government. She had Uncle Sam to help her out and a farm economy that had not yet shut out or drove out its family farms (what many of us call agricide).

In Hunt's era (1970s-1980s), milk prices dropped due to increased production of milk and increased competition. We have mega-farms populating the Wisconsin dairy landscape (I went to grad. school in Wisconsin and saw them first-hand). These mega farms draw down heavy subsidies and benefit from farm loan packages that favor capital expansions. The family farm is driven out by those who can produce milk in higher quantity and under more "efficient production" conditions (the farmers who expand their operations and have the capital to invest in more high-tech equipment: more milking machines, higher-tech barns, lighting systems that encourage more milk production and a more intensive milking cycle). Also, the milk processors/distributors (and the consumers) want to pay less for milk (esp. if they shop at Walmart!)--less of the ag dollar goes to the farmer and more to the middleman (processor/distributor/retail outlets) unless farmers can increase their production level and make up the difference with quantity (organic milk production is an exception, of course).

Brandt can't say all this, but this all lurks behind Day and Hunt's narratives. The globalizing and industrializing of agriculture. Here's where globalization comes into play!

Can you tell I'm a farm kid? ;-) My uncle was the Washington state dairy farmer of the year.

Now I don't want anyone to think this is just esoteric knowledge or wacky EILEEN farm kid knowledge. Brandt wants us to think about the economic conditions of literacy. These large historical and economic forces DO matter to Brandt's narrative since both of these women are embedded in a changing agricultural economy. The challenge here is how much can she tell the reader or include? The focus is on the interviewees, so this background info. is really a bit too much, but could it fit in moreso in some of the footnotes and interstitial material?

Thursday, October 26, 2006

One University's Expansion is Another Community's Destruction

Deborah Brandt speaks of literacy sponsors as agents who actively promote, enable, or suppress literacy. I'd like to attempt in this blog post to do a bit of literacy sponsorship about questions of city politics, eminent domain, the war in Iraq, and the consequences for city residents. Bear with me....


Nellie Bailey from the Harlem Tenant's Association spoke at the Feminism and War Conference last week. She called the audience's attention to Columbia University's proposed expansion into West Harlem. The press release below explains the plan for gentrification and the protest launched last spring. Eminent Domain is being evoked by Columbia. Some may remember Yale University's similar expansion into surrounding neighborhoods.

Note the troping in the press release on Hurricane Columbia--reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina. Ms. Bailey also spoke at the Feminism and War Conference of the effects of the war on working class city residents, the draining off of public funds to go toward the war effort. She evoked the failed levees (and the failed effort to fix them due to choices by public officials) in New Orleans. Her argument: the decision not to fix the levees was tied into the desire to siphon public funds away from federal coffers to the war effort. The war in Iraq, she argued, is a war on poor people in Iraq AND in American cities. As we spend more and more money on the war effort, we spend less and less on public services that will aid the working class and the poor. Also, it's a war fought by an all-volunteer force, many of whom "volunteered" because of economic reasons: the military is a way out of poverty--what many call the poverty draft.

She spoke of the linkages between public policies and their consequences--especially their consequences for working class African American neighborhoods.

I think many of us would like to see our universities as progressive forces within our communities, not see them as landlords, empire builders, and agents of environmental racism. Yet the story of Columbia encroaching on Harlem and using eminent domain is not an unfamiliar one. In Syracuse, we have several cases where eminent domain is being evoked:

--The fight over the creation of a Midland Avenue Sewage Treatment Plant here in Syracuse in a working class, African American neighborhood. For more on this and on environmental racism, see
http://www.esf.edu/org/seac/midland.htm

--Pyramid Corporation and the expansion of the Carousel Mall for the DESTINY project. This is not a case of environmental racism, but it is a case of a larger entity forcing an expansion on a group of businesses already housed within the mall.
http://www.syracuse.com/destinyusa/updates/
Looks like Pyramid is winning this one this time, but will Destiny ever be?

The Feminism and War Conference challenged me to think about these global-local linkages and about the priorities for public funding in the face of what I consider an unjust and immoral war. It also got me and my family out to a peace rally last Friday in the freezing rain with "War Kills Children" sign in the hands of my four year old daughter. It also made me think more about the relationship of the university to the community--its responsibility to be a public good. Chancellor Cantor is always challenging us to think about being a public good--how is Columbia University being a public good as it seeks to take up West Harlem? How can SU be a public good in this fight against Midland's Treatment Plant? In the fight over cleaning up Onondaga Lake?



For Immediate Release: April 22, 2006 DEMO DAY

CONTACT CELL NO: Tom DeMott (917 969-0669)
Alt: #'s: Nellie Bailey (212) 234-5005 or Luis Tejada (212) 234-3002 (se
habla espanol),

April 27, Harlem Community Fights Hurricane Columbia’s Proposed Expansion

On Thursday, April 27th from 4P.M. until 6:30 P.M. in front of the main gate
of Columbia University at 116th and Broadway, hundreds of Harlem residents,
workers, students, business owners and supporters from across the city will
demonstrate against the University’s proposed 5 billion-dollar thirty-year
expansion into the Manhattanville section of West Harlem. Not since 1968 has
Columbia University faced such community opposition. Demonstrators are protesting
the University’s attempt to move forward like a hurricane evicting and
destroying this historic Harlem community and damaging the surrounding neighborhoods.
Members of the Coalition to Preserve Community, the West Harlem Business Group
and the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification will express support
for development under the community-based 197A plan, initiated a decade
before the University's plan, which would protect the very businesses and
residential buildings that Columbia seeks to remove as well as provide for compensatory
mechanisms addressing secondary displacement.

Community Demands Leases for Local Businesses
Workers and owners of businesses at 3251 Broadway, which has five floors full
of skilled auto mechanics and a basement antique restoration business have
been worried about their future ever since Columbia purchased the building a
few months ago and immediately tried to shut down the elevator that serves all the
occupants. Community residents will express their solidarity with them and will
demand that Columbia give leases to all of them. "We have skilled workers here
who earn a good living and support their families. They will not be finding
employment at Columbia's biotech labs and our jobs are protected under the 197A
plan," said Jovani Dominguez, the owner of New Millennium Auto Repair.
Columbia Threatens Eminent Domain to Businesses and Residents
Columbia is harassing businesses and distributing PR brochures without
reference to the current commercial and residential uses. Anne Whitman, owner of
Hudson Moving, states: "They are pretending we don't exist. If Columbia and Mr.
Bollinger truly believed in and supported "affirmative action" in the real
world, they would not threaten a 100% woman owned business in a 100% woman owned
property with 100% women and minority employees. I am not for sale and neither
are the other businesses and residents!"
Rob Rosello, a tenant in 3289 Broadway who has been working for years to
convert his building to a low-income home-ownership cooperative under the
city's Tenant Interim Lease program, speaks of the need for solidarity. "My building,
and those tenants in other buildings nearby who are facing eviction, like 602
West 132nd Street, have supported the 197 A plan because it supports the idea
that longtime residents should have a chance at ownership. The backbone
position of the 197A plan is that those who want to stay should be able to
stay and that includes us. We support the workers at 3251 Broadway and the other
businesses in the area that have right to stay here along with those who live
here."

Biotech Research Raises Health and Safety Concerns
The decision by Columbia, with a history of EPA violations concerning
hazardous materials, to place a biotech research center in the midst of a residential
neighborhood is a concern that goes beyond the immediate Harlem community.
Its proximity to the Hudson River and to an earthquake fault, recent biotech
accidents, and the likelihood of military-related research in this age of extra
vigilance due to bio-terrorist fears, heightens anxiety. The community will not
allow the University to replace long-term residents with money-making
biodefense contracts and shiny new Biolevel #3 labs. This is a residential
neighborhood and its residents are not willing to be accident victims.

Demands to Bollinger
The Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification, working with
community groups, say that Columbia students are increasingly questioning the
University's plans to convert a vibrant and diverse neighborhood into an
institutional company town. The students will help get the community's demands to
CU's President Bollinger. Bryan Mercer of the Student Coalition said, "We
believe the community needs a voice and our job is to try and do something
sensible here, not bulldoze people out."

RALLY AT 5:30: Speakers will include business owners, workers, and
residential tenants facing eviction, as well as longtime community residents, clergy,
members of local non-profits and students.

FOR MORE INFO, CONTACT: Coalition to Preserve Community: Tom DeMott (cell:
917 969-0669) (212) 666-6426 or bfrappy24@aol.com) or Nellie Bailey (212)
234-5005, or Luis Tejada (212) 234-3002 (se habla espanol),
West Harlem Business Group: Anne Whitman cell 917 705-2922 (212) 678-4862 or
Nick Sprayregan cell: (917)-299-0907 or (212) 368-1717
Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification: Nell Geiser
(646)-296-5927, Bryan Mercer (267)-252-6542 or Lee Norsworthy (856) 371-6123

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Graduate School as the Parlor

Browsing the 601 blogs tonight, I see not only the notes about what we are reading in the class, but other texts and subtexts. Laurie and Terri both introduced the question of dipping into conversations in the graduate program or in conferences or other spaces of the academic community. Laurie framed her response in relation to the Feminism and War Conference and David Bartholomae's essay "Inventing the University." As I read their (your!) posts, I couldn't help but think about the well-worn quotation from Kenneth Burke about the "parlor." I think it fits what happens with one's entrance into any new discourse community, but I think it is especially helpful for meditating on what happens upon entering graduate school.

"Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress."

Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (110-11)

Note the idea of getting to a conversation "late" with others not able to "retrace for you all the steps that had gone before." Sound familiar? Note the listening until the "tenor" of an argument is caught before dipping your "oar" in and making your voice heard. I think that what might be a further issues to plumb is how to put your oar into the water. We need Kelly Rawson here to give us some lessons in paddling a canoe (Kelly, are you still out there ??). But it's a real question: how to you put your oar in the water, how to move ahead, how do you move with the current (or fight against it)?

Some might shout "Just do IT." The Nike ad. Lace up and start running. What about stretching? What about warmup, though, the preparation-oriented person might ask?

OK, I've got a lot of mixed metaphors here. Sitting in a parlor, rowing, running, bear with me, OK? What we ask you to do in this program is damn hard: juggling three and sometimes four classes, teaching, professional development, service. Time management advice abounds, but there is a lot going on these first few months (and years, right?). There is doing the work (teaching, scholarship, classes service, etc), then there is also doing the emotional work of doing the work. That is yet a whole other layer. Then there is the layer of preparing for the future while also doing everything that needs to get done in the immediate sense.

I hear you. At the same time, many of us will tell you how lucky you are to have this time to read and think because you won't have it as a junior faculty member with new courses to teach and pressures to publish and direct writing programs or do other dept. and university work. Meanwhile, you may wonder what it means to have time to read and think because you may not feel you have enough time to read and think and absorb and make sense of the readings.

I return to the parlor, though. You come in later and you often leave later. Part of getting in and engaging the conversation is accepting the condition of being somewhat late to it and not always on even footing.

Anyway, my two cents worth on a Saturday night....

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The Greenbelt Movement

Wangari Matthai has improved the environment of her native Kenya by persuading the women of Kenya to plant trees. In doing so, she has launched the greenbelt environmental movement. The planting of trees has reduced erosion, rejuvenated the environment, provided firewood for families, and allowed for sustainable crops. Her efforts to improve the environment and make women's lives better won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. On Tuesday afternoon, she spoke to a packed crowd at Hendrick's Chapel. I asked the 601 class to attend the lecture after class if they could, and I got to listen in for about 30 minutes before rushing off to pick up Autumn. Micere Mugo from African American Studies gave a beautiful introduction and taught the audience to clap three times in unison to greet Matthai in the traditional Kenyan way.

What struck me about Matthai's speech was how integrated her perspective is. She spoke of understanding the "linkages" between the environment and human choices. Cutting down the forests to grow cash crops of coffee and tea resulted in a monocultural environment. Growing lumber for harvesting resulted in "dead forests" devoid of insect and animal life. She noticed erosion in the rainy season when she was out in the field "picking ticks" for her research on diseases in cattle. She saw how interconnected the environmental problems were to human choices. She saw, as she put it, "the "linkages." She hatched a plan and began to organize and connect women, building solidarity. I'd like to learn more about how she made arguments and mobilized people.

Hearing about the greenbelt movement reminded me of Chipko, the movement of women in India who literally hugged trees to protect them from being bulldozed for timber. The expression "tree-hugger" derives from that organization. Vandana Shiva (my all-time heroine) was one of the women involved in this movement before she went on to become involved in organizing Indian farmers to resist biopiracy and the genetic engineering of food. More on her in a later post.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

What happens to scholars over time: The citation life

So what happens to scholars over time? We have a tendency to fossilize people in time, often. when we read their essays in anthologies. How does their work evolve and change and respond to different questions that the field poses? That they pose?

See Linda Flower's work on community as an example of where she takes her thinking on cognition.. Consider how the titles change (below), yet encompass her core interests. Note also how a specific inquiry site (a literacy center) focuses a lot of her publications in a local venue.

The key question is how do we continue to work and rework our key intellectual questions that take on different twists, turns, forms, and methodologies. Note how her book contains the phrasing "social cognitive theory of writing."

One could do the same with Andrea Lunsford, Mike Rose, etc. Watch how their intellectual projects unfold over time. Trish and I were talking the other week about James Berlin's work, and I mentioned Victor Vitanza's grad. course on Berlin. Vitanza's course unfolds Berlin's lifetime of work and addresses the roots of his terminologies.

I think that an exercise like this is useful to consider for many of the major theorists/researchers we read this semester. Where does their work start, where does it go, how does it take different shapes and why? How does this reflect larger intellectual trends and patterns of the field and of knowledge making, new technologies?

This is worth thinking about in relation to our work. The moment is always important--kairos. But how are we simply working on the same project over a lifetime? My dissertation director Lynn Worsham always maintained that we are working on the same project, just in different forms. I've always thought that was true.



This is the html version of the file http://english.cmu.edu/research/clc/Com_Lit_Bib.pdf.
COMMUNITY LITERACY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
Dr. Linda Flower (lf54+@andrew.cmu.edu)
(412) 268-2863 FAX: 412-268-7989
Publications:

Flower, L. (1994). The construction of negotiated meaning A social cognitive theory of writing.
Carbondale, IL: University of Southern Illinois Press.

Flower, L. (1996). Literate action. In L.Z. Bloom, D. A. Daiker, & E. M. White (Eds.),
Composition in the Twenty-first century: Crisis and change (pp. 249-260). Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press.

Flower, L. (1996). Negotiating the meaning of difference. Written Communication, 13 (1), 44-92.

Flower, L. (1996). Collaborative planning and community literacy: A window on the logic of
learners. In L. Schauble & R. Glaser (Eds.), Innovations in learning: New environments for
education (pp. 25-48). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Flower, L. (1997). Partners in inquiry: A logic for community outreach. In L. Adler-Kassner,
R. Crooks, & A. Watters (Eds.), Writing the community: Concepts and models for service-learning
in composition (pp. 95-117). Washington, DC: American Association of Higher Education.

Flower, L. (1997). Observation-based theory building. In Gary Olson & Todd Taylor (Eds.),
Publishing in rhetoric and composition (pp. 163-185). Urbana, IL: NCTE

Flower, L. (1998) Problem-solving strategies for writing in college and community. 4th edition
ISBN: 0155054961 : Heinle

Flower, L. (2000). The Evolution of Intercultural Inquiry: Interview with Linda Flower.
Reflections On Community-Based Writing Instruction. 1 (2) Fall, 3-4.

Flower, L. (2002). Intercultural Knowledge Building: The Literate Action of a Community Think Tank.
Writing Selves and Society: Research from Activity Perspectives. Ed. C. Bazerman & D. Russell.
Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse

Flower, L. (2002). Intercultural inquiry and the transformation of service. College English,
65 (2), 181-201.

Flower, L. (2003). Talking Across Difference: Intercultural Rhetoric and the Search for Situated
Knowledge. College Composition and Communication, 55(1), 38-68.

Flower, L., & Deems, J. (2002). Conflict in community collaboration. In J. M. Atwill & J. Lauer
(Eds.), New perspectives on rhetorical invention. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.


Flower, L., & Flach, J. (1996). Working partners: An urban youth report on risk, stress, and respect.
Pittsburgh, PA. The Community Literacy Center and Carnegie Mellon University.


Flower, L., Long, E., & Higgins, L. (2000). Learning to rival: A literate practice for
intercultural inquiry. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Flower, L., and S. Heath. (2000). Drawing on the local: Collaboration and community expertise.
Journal of Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, 4, ( 3 )October, 43-55,

Page 2
Community Literacy Bibliography

Flower, L., Wallace, D., Norris, L., & Burnett, R. E. (Eds.). (1994). Making thinking visible:
Writing, collaborative planning, and classroom inquiry. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Flower's work also is evident in the dissertations she has directed.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Play up Sex!

Well, it's not fair of me to highlight the straight from the Id comments from the professor in the protocol analysis from Flower and Hayes "play up sex" (p. 295), but I can't help it! It screams out at me. It also says how he imagines (or not) his discourse community. I've already had a little fun with it on Tanya's blog, so I'll try to tone in down here. I'll just mark it as an item of interest and do a dutiful job of trying to account for the Flower and Hayes article "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing" (1981 CCC). This article must be read as part of a larger body of work produced by Flower and Hayes and also by Flower who wrote a much utilized textbook and also has newer work that incorporates work with a community literacy partnership. I'll dig up some links to the larger body of their work in another post.

First, off, let me comment that it is pretty quiet in the blogosphere right now. Is everyone battening down for the winter? Putting up storm windows, digging out those long lost snowboots and winter socks or rushing out to get the first ever pair? (I'm imagining Trish out there getting some boots)?

Tom, Autumn, and I squeezed in a birthday trip for him Friday and Saturday to Rochester, so we had a nice time there. Autumn also has a new winter coat--pink in contrast to all the blue ones I've selected for her in year's past. But that is another discourse community to be plumbed in another post....

Well, it's not quiet on Laura's blog where she has engaged in a call and response with Mina Shaughnessy. Check it out. Preach it!

As for Flower and Hayes, the first few pages are a useful overview of the composing process research up to 1981 (Britton; Moffett; Kinneavy; Odell, Cooper and Courts). Emig? Bitzer and Vatz are mentioned as those coming at questions of audience from a rhetorical perspective. They point out, though, that this research does not necessarily answer the question: "What guides the decisions that writers make as they write?" (273). They want to understand how writers negotiate that decision-making. "This paper will introduce a theory of the cognitive processes involved in composing in an effort to lay groundwork for more detailed study of thinking processes of writing" (274). They develop four key points in relation to setting forth a cognitive process theory model:

"1)The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing

2) These processes have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization in which any given process can be embedded within any other.

3) The act of composing itself is a goal-directed thinking process guided by the writer's own growing network of goals.

4) Writers create their own goals in two key ways: by generating both high-level goals and supporting sub-goals which embody the wrtier's developing sense of purpose, and then, at times, by changing major goals or even establishing entirely new ones based on what has been learned in the act of writing" (275).

They go on to question further the "stage" models of the composing process and then elaborate in further detail (in some cases quite complex) how their model is a "major departure fromt the traditional paradigm of stages" (276). I won't belabor all the problems they find with the stage models, but their model is an improvement, in their words, because it considers the "thinking" that goes on in writing. They argue that writing has "three major elements": " the task environment, the writer's long-term memory, and the writing processes" (277). A diagram of the model can be reviewed on p. 278 of _Cross-Talk_.

A writing situation is always governed by a "rhetorical problem" (279). This is, essentially, the assigned writing task. In the case of the protocol analysis they feature, the task is an English professor being asked to write about his job to an audience of teenage girls who read _Seventeen_ magazine. His task is how to solve the problem of what to say to this audience.

In doing so, he has to draw on his long-term memory to figure out how to approach the topic. What does he know about teenage girls? What does he know about _Seventeen_ magazine? What can he say about his job that will be of interest to this group? How can he get their attention?

He begins planning, going back and forth between the rhetorical problem he faces and modifying his understanding of it. He generates ideas from long-term memory and begins to try to organize his long-term memories and set and reset his goals for the writing task. The goals he sets for himself are self-created. These goals are "generated, developed and revised by the same processes that generate and organize new ideas" (281). He tries to translate his ideas into symbols, he reviews and evaluates those ideas, and he monitors his process. In other words, the processes are not linear, we do not "march through these processes in a simple 1, 2, 3 order" (284). We move around in these thinking processes: "First, as our model of the writing process describes, the processes of generating and evaluating appear ot have the power to interrupt the writer's process at any point--and they frequently do. This means that new knowledge and/or some feature of the current text can interrupt the process at any time through the process of generating and evaluating. This allows a flexible collaboration among goals, knowledge, and texts" (289). This is a pretty dynamic model. It is epistemic, too: "In the act of writing, people regenerate or recreate their own goals in light of what they learn" (290).

The rest of the essay goes on to discuss the protocol of the professor composing an essay for his teenage audience. I've already talked about this on Tanya's blog, to some extent, but I do want to comment that the discussion/description of the cognitive process model dominates the article, and the protocol itself takes a backseat. The rhetorical choice to explain the model largely in isolation from the example or examples (I've actually cheated and tried to bring the two together) can be useful, but it has the effect here of making the protocol look like an after-thought, and there is a lot that is so interesting in this protocol: how the writer constructs an image and view of young girls, how he tries to think through how to represent his work, how he imagines _Seventeen_ magazine.

I can see how the model operates with and explains the professor's thinking processes, but what it does not account for are his cultural assumptions and biases that make it possible for him to address, or not, his audience. This is where Bizzell's article "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty" ((1982) comes into play as a useful corrective. I quote them at length: "The Flower-Hayes model consistently presents a description of how the writing process goes on as if it were capable of answering questions about why the writer makes certain choices in certain situations. While it is useful for us to have an overview of the 'how' such as the Flower-Hayes model offers, we should not suppose that this will enable us to advise students on difficult questions of practice. To put it another way, if we are going to see students as problem-solvers, we must also see them as problem-solvers situated in DISCOURSE COMMMUNITIES [my emphasis] that guide problem definition and the range of alternative solutions" (395). This explains some of the professor's struggles with trying to address the teen girls. He is struggling with how to frame his discourse for his audience; he is struggling with (and, I would argue, hampered by) gender-based assumptions. I'd like to see what he wrote, wouldn't you? (or maybe not)

The Flower-Hayes model is interesting to me--yes, interesting upon a distance of 25 years. The attempt to understand complex thinking processes in composing seems important, and later work on cognition bridges some of the gaps, accounting for some of the points I raise above and others such as culture, the environment, the role of emotions on cognition.

Yet "play up sex" (p. 295) remains one of the truly memorable lines in early composition protocol analysis. It is, unfortunately, all too familiar of a line. Play up sex to teenage girls (implied that it will get their interest), he says, and then the researcher notes "Yet it was instructive to note that once this new plan was represented in language--subjected to the acid test of prose--it too failed to pass, because it violated some of his tacit goals or criteria for an acceptable prose style" (295). How about this? HE SOUNDED A BIT LIKE A LECHEROUS IDIOT (PLAY UP SEX TO UNDERAGE MINORS), so he had a laugh at himself( we hope), and he skipped along to his next great idea.

Unfair, I know, but these moments need to be marked. The "model" takes care of the prof's remark (and the remark about girls liking English cuz its tidy) or does it?

My question: In addition to all this model allows for, how does protocol analysis (allow or not) and this model of cognitive process allow for assessment of cultural assumptions and biases?

Monday, October 09, 2006

Gallaudet and Kinneavy

Keep your eyes on Gallaudet University where the students have barricaded themselves in the administration building to protest the incoming president of the university. Both faculty and students are protesting the Board's selection of her for a number of reasons that relate to questions about her effectiveness and her fitness for the position. She is to be the second deaf president in the history of the university, but she did not learn ASL until she was in her twenties. Some of the coverage refers to her as the "third choice candidate" of the faculty and students. Today's coverage is all over the place: _Inside Higher Ed_ and on NPR and other major venues. There is a complicated history of protest at Gallaudet over the selection of leaders.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/09/gallaudet

While reading the coverage today, I ran across an article written by a student journalist that addressed how students at Gallaudet and elsewhere must have "too much time on their hands" or "too much time between classes" if they are protesting. Protesting is something that college students outgrow said this notable student journalistic sage.

Now what does this have to do with Kinneavy? Well, Kinneavy is worried, too, about what he deems students' "unorthodox and extreme forms of deviant self-expression" (137). Keep in mind that he published this article in 1969 when things were really heating up with the SDS and with anti-Vietnam protests and with civil rights and feminism. He may have other contexts in mind like the demand for education to be relevant. I'm not exactly sure. But instead of looking to the larger social forces as the main explanatory narrative for the students' self-expression, Kinneavy has an interesting theory about why these "deviant self-expressions" are taking place:

"At the college level, in English departments during the period immediately preceding the present, the restriction of composition to expository writing and the reading of literay texts had had two equally dangerous consequences. First, the neglect of expressionism, as a reaction to progressive education, has stifled self-expression in the student and partially, at least, is a cause of the unorthodox and extreme forms of deviant self-expression now indulged in by college students on many campuses today" (137).

This is a really interesting assertion, on some level. English departments neglecting expressive discourse means that students are busting out all over the place with demands for modes of expression. Happenings, sit-ins, consciousness raising groups, political meetings by leftist and civil rights groups and anti-war protestors. Now that is an interesting perspective as it tries to put the English dept. at the center of maelstrom of political and expressive activity. If English would do more to help these students express themselves (if the English dept. would act as an outlet and a regulating force), they (the students) might not resort to such extreme measures. I really want to know more about what Kinneavy was actually reacting to, specifically.

Kinneavy ends with a plea for a "preservation of the liberal arts tradition with composition as a foundation stone" and with a very reasonable assertion that "'[i]t is to the good of each of the aims of discourse to be studied in conjunction with others" (138).

Kinneavy was looking for a way to balance out the study of discourse and a way to refigure English depts. I hear a frustration and anger in this piece at the end that I found fascinating. I don't agree with his interpretation of what was happening with student self-expression (lack of expressive discourse made them "resort" to other outlets), but I appreciate that he saw English depts. as a place that might make a difference for students.

Berlin echoes an aspect of this theme of the importance of teaching discourse when he argues in "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories" that in "teaching writing we are tacitly teaching a version of reality and the student's place and mode of operation in it" (257). If we see our task as mechanistic, imparting the rules (which Hartwell critiques, too), we fail to realize that we are "given a responsibility that far exceeds this merely instrumental task" (257). Here's another quotation from Berlin:

"We are teaching a way of experiencing the world, a way of ordering and making sense of it" ( Berlin 268). Our notions of what happens with writing relate to our theories of language and rhetoric that inform that work. What are those theories? When we try to answer those questions, do we come out with a mish-mash of maxims of do we really answer the question: How does language work? How do our theories of language directly influence the ways we teach writing? Yes, these are basic questions, but have we answered them satisfactorily?

Sunday, October 08, 2006

D'Angelo and Empire

I have been reading around in the 601 blogs tonight, and one particular thread caught my attention: the one that Terri and Trish are pursuing on their blogs about D'Angelo's article. I posted a response to Trish's blog that I'll take a bit further (and I excerpt it below, too) What got me worked up in the D'Angelo piece was the theory of rhetoric that was linked to his meditation on consciousness and composing. There is a universalist notion of rhetoric behind this. I'll repeat the line from his essay: “The function of rhetoric, therefore, is to guide individuals who are distinct and separate toward greater unity and identification of purpose and action” (D'Angelo 148).

This is interesting statement in a time of global empire, globalization, and war. It is interesting in relation to the repeated cycles of genocide in the 20th/21st century (see my entry on the Armenian genocide). It is interesting statement in light of continued interest and commitment to human rights discourses in the face of repeated denials and travesties committed against human rights. I am speaking of large trends and patterns, but I think we have to think big if we are to take on D'Angelo's big statement about rhetoric's function. I want to test it not only in its own context (1978 and a time when composition studies is forming research paradigms and professionalizing), but I want to test it against our times and also against its own times. In D'Angelo's case it was the Cold War, continued after-shocks of the Nixon Presidency, Carter in office, the Iran Hostage "crisis," feminism, putting into practice key civil rights legislation, higher education contraction and expansion at the same time. So a desire for unity and universalism in a Western framework, but that framework fragments and breaks up into ruins as we move further toward the end of the 20th century with the fall of the Soviet Empire and the emergence of the U.S. as the sole global superpower,

So there are interesting tensions here: a tension between a universalist and unifying notion of rhetoric and a world that is increasingly fragmented by economic disparities, war, genocide, preventable epidemics (preventable if there is political and economic will). This is, I guess, my "dark" blog post. I prefer a rhetoric of solidarity across differences rather than a rhetoric of unity. This aligns me with the discussion of the "new rhetoric" and "social epistemic rhetoric" that is being discussed on Tanya's blog.




FROM MY POST to Trish:

Your ruminations are useful here, Trish. It is useful also to think of how the field of neuroscience reframes many of the issues that D’Angelo raises. What does current brain research show that supports and defeats these arguments?

I think at base here is also a question about what D’Angelo thinks rhetoric is for, and this fits in with his views of mind. He argues that the goal for evolution if “hothing less than universal convergence” (148). Rhetoric must also move toward universal convergence: “The function of rhetoric, therefore, is to guide individuals who are distinct and separate toward greater unity and identification of purpose and action” (148). That sounds pretty good if you are a universalist and you want to talk about mankind as a universal category, but is it really the case? Isn’t rhetoric’s purpose to also create division? To separate and name differences, create identification with some groups and division with others? I’m thinking of Burke here and thinking of contemporary politics in the U.S. and on the global stage. A “rhetoric of Empire” could be that universal impulse–do we want that?

Quoting Teilhard, D’Angelo argues that “the men (yes, men) of the future will form, in some way, but one single consciousness” (148). This is the dream of a greater humanity united by a set of values and a common consciousness. Yet we can see that we are so far from that right now that a statement like that seems like a strange note in a bottle that has floated in from a distant shore.

Recognizing that he can accused of evolutionary determinism, D’Angelo quickly defends by noting that free choice is possible. But isn’t choice conditioned by economics, politics, social contexts, etc? I go back to the mid-section of the article and think that he needs to stick to some of Neumann’s insights about the egocentricity of “mankind.” The assertion of the will of the few on the wills of the many. This is not what Neumann said exactly, but he seems to have a bleaker view that I find appealing given D’Angelo’s tendency to wax universal.
These week's 601 readings present quite a grab-bag of possibilities for discussion: Hartwell on grammar, Kinneavy on theories of discourse, Braddock on the topic sentence, D'Angelo on a psychological theory of the composing process, and Berlin on theories of contemporary composition. This is all in the segment that Villaneuva refers to as "discourse." We didn't read all the essays in this segment, rather we sampled some of them. The class members are blogging individual notes for select figures, so I'll jump in and comments on the set up of this conversation in _Cross-Talk_.

As Villaneuva argues, all of the essays are "concerened with matters of mind: ontology, epistemology, psychology" (127). He reminds us that these questions go back to the second book of Aristotle, "which provides a psychology of audiences" (127). He also reminds us that we need to remember that 18th c. rhetorician George Campbell and 19th c. rhetorician Alexander Bain turned to psychology to "explain the processes involved in rhetorical acts" (127). The picture would not be complete without Kenneth Burke, either, who considered symbolic action in relation to the "new sciences" of which psychology is one (127).

What I think is interesting about this section in _Cross-Talk_ is that it is very grab-bag. I'm not sure it is a coherent section in the book, and I don't yet have a fully worked through explanation of why I feel this is so. I'll work on it. I agree that pyschology is major cross-theme across the essays, but moreso in some pieces that in others. What does hold the chapter together across the essays is Villaneuva's argument that the a number of the essays tend to "look to the parts of discourse in order to understand the whole more readily" (128). What I'm interested in, too, is the methodological differences across the essays: how the object of study is framed, what the controls and constraints are within each essay. More on that later.

On Laura's blog, I commented on my sense that Braddock left out questions of genre and the major differences between a journalistic essay for a major publication vs. student essays. It seems reasonable that genre and audience are the major factors here in determining whether or not such pieces have topic sentences, yet that issue is largely omitted. This goes back to the way the study was defined to isolate and discuss a particular feature of prose: the topic sentence. It seems to me one of the challenges this segment of readings poses is how to study language as a whole vs. how to study constituent parts of language such as sentences. What do we find from looking at the part vs. the whole? This is a productive tension throughout all the pieces in this section, and it is one I'd like to talk more about in class.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Pig Farm Could Sell for 75 Million

Those of you who know me know that I occasionally rant or write about agriculture on this blog. I'm working on a book that addresses the public rhetorics of agriculture, so I constantly watch the news for stories about the ag world.

Well, this one was out through the Associated Press. It hit the Syracuse paper, too. This one is about a pig farmer in Las Vegas who is being offered 75 million for his land so that homes can be built on his farmland. This is a common enough story: farmland sold off to developers, yet it has some interesting twists and turns. The money alone is astounding.

North Las Vegas has grown up around this farmer's swine operation (he raises 3,500 pigs). The folks in their nice air-conditioned homes with their patios and watered lawns really don't like the smell of the swine barns wafting across their subdivisions. Now these folks probably like their bacon, pork chops, pork tenderloin, and barbequed pork as much as the rest of the world. but they probably reason that their pork is not supposed to be rolling around in their neighborhood. Pork is supposed to be in vaccumed sealed packages in the local supermarket. Never mind how it gets raised--just NIMBY (NOT IN MY BACKYARD).

I can tell you from experience (yes, I did help raise a couple of pigs in my farm days) that pigs do smell. But so do cows, chickens, and all other domestic farm animals. 3,500 animals--well, you can imagine what the manure yields are on a daily basis.

Guess what--this intrepid farmer does NOT want to sell. He wants people in the neighborhood to see his farm as a public good, not as public nuisance! He feeds his pigs recycled food from the local casinos, so he actually has an environmental argument for remaining on the land: he's performing a public service of feeding people and actually helping the environment.

There's a lot to say about this story--the beleagured farmer, the greedy developers, the lack of zoning and city planning, the environmental angle (feeding pigs recycled casino food). Even though I want to root for this farmer and I am rooting for him to stay and defy the development of his land, he's running a factory farm, essentially. Yes, it's a family farm, but the size of the operation makes it a CAFO and along with that do come real environmental concerns about the release of ammonia, manure lagoons, etc. We don't get details about how he runs his operation, but an operation that size is usually always highly industrialized (antibiotics, huge confinement sheds, manure lagoons or pits).

So how does one read this story? David (the little guy) fighting Goliath (the developers)? The yeoman farmer making his stand? The industrialized farmer fighting suburban sprawl?
The durn fool who won't take the money and get on to Florida?

See the story at

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/060925/323/gn11x.html

Monday, October 02, 2006

Is Post-Process theory a floating signifier, too?

I'm enjoying Lisa Ede's wide-ranging reading of the post-process movement.I think her read of the professionalization of composition studies is an important chapter in understanding process theories of composing. In fact, I find this to be the strongest segment of Part II and, in some ways, of the whole book. I like the way she unfolds a discussion of the "crisis rhetoric" that spurred universities to hire composition faculty, the need for employment that literature Ph.D.s felt, the use of social science oriented research as a way to prove that the field had a "method" and "strategies" for solving the literacy crisis. One thing I wondered about as I read along for a second time was what role open admissions played in all of this. She does mention Shaughnessy, but the democratization of higher education and affirmative action was a major factor here, and I wondered why we didn't hear more about that.

I think Ede makes a very strong point about post-process theory but is she also making the same kind of move with post-process theory that she says post-process folks are making with process theories, what she calls the writing process movement (63)? She has pointed to a range of texts that identify our historical and epistemological "turn" to post-process theory (Reither, Cooper, Kent, Dobrin, Crowley, Faigley, Harris, etc). But we don't get detailed readings of these texts. She points out that these texts tend to see process theories in limited "floating signifier" ways. I worry that post-process theory is also becoming a floating signifier in Ede's text. That doesn't mean that I don't see her text doing important work--it is. But what about the differences across these texts? She does treat those differences in small detail, but I guess I want to see a fuller reading across those texts. Has someone done that already? I want to understand how the post-process theory conversation evolved in more detail and why it evolved for specific material reasons beyond the professionalization argument. What about postmodernism, poststructuralism, revisions of liberal feminisms, critical race theory, and globalization?

While Ede is focused on process and post-process, other scholars have articulated the debate as one of expressivism vs. social constructionism.

A few years ago when I taught Thomas Kent's edited collection on post-process theory in CCR 601, I invited my colleague Jim Zebroski to come and talk about his views on post-process theory and on the ways that the process movement has been discussed and addressed in our composition histories. He gave a great talk, and some of the ideas he shared with us are in his essay entitled "The Expressivist Menace" in the edited collection by Rosner et al _History, Reflection, and Narrative: The Professionalization of Composition, 1963-1983_ (Ablex, 1999) This is an important collection, and Jim does a good job of unpacking the reaction against the "spectre" of expressivism. He looks at empirical evidence for how expressivism has emerged in the field, examining writing practices, teaching practices, curricular practices, disciplinary practices, professional practices, and theorizing practices. Part of the problem with composition histories that make claims about expressivism is that they examine only a narrow range of evidence. Jim's study expands the conversation, and he articulates a useful social formation reading of why we are in the moment of reaction against expressivism. I'll bring in his article to class, and we can talk about his reading of the social formation of particular arguments about expressivism.

Also, I really like Laurie's use of Britton et al to unpack a reading of the "Mind the Gap" assignment in Writing 105. Read her entry if you haven't already at her blog: thoughtjam@wordpress.com.

I have to go read a few more 105 papers before tomorrow morning!

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Post-post-process

Tanya and Immy's blog posts on this week's 601 readings have brought up some interesting questions and issues regarding Nancy Sommers' article on student vs. experienced writers revision strategies and the Breuch piece on post-process theory.

I posted some fairly long responses to each of their blog entries, but I want to back-track and pose a few questions and thoughts about each area.


I like the way Immy unpacks the student writer vs. experienced writer dichotomy in Sommers's article. I think that the binaries of experienced vs. inexperienced writers, skilled vs. unskilled writers, basic writer vs. first-year "typical" writers get us into trouble. There were practical reasons to create those categories for the researchers, no doubt, but how do they prohibit a wide angle examination of what actually happens for writers without putting on stigmatizing labels? And what of all the baggage these labels carry? Also, I'm puzzling through the idea of "maturity" in relation to writing? What these analyses bring up, whether directly or indirectly, is the question of age and experience as well as cultural background, mastery of the subject at hand, power relations within institutions, etc. How have we (or have we not) examined the role of age and psychological maturity in these studies? We have been giving Emig a hard time for singling out Lynn, but is her major factor (beyond the past writing archive) the unsual psychological "maturity" and insight of Lynn as a young person? We'd probably say yes. Yes, Lynn is exceptional, beyond her years. She's an unusually "mature" writer compared to the rest, it seems. So we value an ethos of experience, self-reflexivity, and maturity. How to get there?

Tanya's ruminations on Breuch make me think a lot more about what function post-process theory serves. My question is: What role and function does post-process theory really serve as this historical juncture in composition studies? Is it a reactive discourse? A flip-the-script moment, moving toward a paradigm shift? Or is it really a discourse and set of theories that describe the epistemological shifts that are already underway? Anti-foundationalism and post-modern discourses have permeated much of the scholarly work in composition and rhetoric (I'm not so sure these discourses get played out and enacted in the pedagogical arena). How do those discourses really seep into the modernist enterprise of first-year writing instruction? I'm having a Sharon Crowley moment, I guess, as I think about the arguments she makes for abolishing the first-year writing requirement with all its modernist trappings. If we are really going to be post-process, perhaps we need to get rid of first-year writing in the first place and be post-first year writing.

I'm struck, too, how frequently Britton et al reference Emig's study. I have read and reread Britton et al many times, but this time the Emig segments stood out for me. I'll say more about that in another entry because I'm suddenly seized with a lot of fatigue and I'm actually starting to "nod off" at the keyboard. I've read too many 105 papers today--more to read tomorrrow, too. I'm not feeling very post-process tonight!

Remind me to post the recipe for squash and apple soup that I made this evening It's definitely steeped in process theory: all that chopping and blending, how could it not be?