John Trimbur notes that ". . . U.S. linguistic culture produces a systematic forgetting of the multiple languages spoken and written in North America and thereby constitutes a key source of American ambivalence toward multilingualism" (577). As he goes on to show, there was nothing un-systematic about that "forgetting." In essence, the forgetting was a form of cultural suppression. Trimbur argues for a transnational perspective to assess the status of other languages in the U.S. in relation to English: "To understand the cultural exchanges that shaped U.S. linguistic culture--its linguistic memory and its habits of forgetting--requires a transnational perspective that enables us to see how U.S. English took shape in relation to other languages" (579).
One of the key historical figures he uses as a reference point is none other than Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was worried about the Germans taking over and "Germanizing" the culture (instead of Anglifying it). He paraphrases Heath's analysis of the pattern in the U.S. "where the language of non-English-speakers who are seen to pose a social, economic, or political threat becomes the 'focus of argument' about linguistic status and political legitimacy (10)" (580). In Franklin's time, it was was the Germans. It is now Spanish-speaking people. We are experiencing such a moment with the hostility toward Spanish-speaking in many parts of the U.S., which is fueled by a sense of "social, economic, or political threat." Immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America (documented and undocumented) to take jobs in the U.S. has caused the kind of xenophobia that Franklin exercised about the Germans. Cities and towns have passed "English-only" ordinances or have exerted more localized attempts to control language such as hanging "English-only" signs in businesses. Meanwhile, such analyses of "linguistic threat" fail to address how North American policies have created such transnational labor migrations (NAFTA, for instance).
These systems of reaction to language difference (coupled with other kinds of difference) have shaped our educational system into a monlingual language environment: "Since the overturn of the classical curriculum and the establishment of graduate education on the German model in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the U.S. university has drastically curtailed the educational role of languages other than than English--whether Greek and Latin in the old-time American pietistic colleges or German for the Americans who went to German universities to get PhDs. Instead English has become the unquestioned medium of instruction and the vernacular of modernity identified with science, technology, and the professions" (583). Trimbur identifies the cultural, social, and economic structures that lead to monolingualism in U.S. culture, but I wonder, too, the interplay of cultural, social, and economic forces with specific individual choices. What is the mix here between taking on a new language (L2 or L3) and maintaining a tie to one's home language (L1)? What about that process?
Trimbur argues, in the end, for addressing "the status planning of languages and an additive language policy whereby all students as a matter of course speak, write, and learn in more than one language and all citizens thereby become capable of communicating with one another in a number of languages, code-switching as appropriate to the rhetorical situation. The goal such a national language policy, I believe, goes beyond a discourse of linguistic rights to imagine the aboliton of English monolingualism altogether and the creation in its place of a linguistic culture where being multilingual is both normal and desirable, as it is throughout much of the world" (587).
These sentiments are echoed throughout all of the readings. Canagarajah argues for the metaphor of "shuttling" back and forth across languages. His argument is that we should study the engagement with language and writing as a "movement" rather than as a static process. We should
"study the movement of the writer between languages; rather than studying the product of descriptions of writing compentence, we would study the process of composing in multiple languages; rather than studying the writer's stablity in specific forms of linguistics or cultural competence, we would analyze his or her versatility (for example, life between multiple languages and cultures);rather than treating language or culture as the main variable, we would analyze his or her versatility (for example life between multiple languages and cultures); rather than treating writers as passive, conditioned by their language and culture, we would treat them as agentive, shuttling creatively between discourses to achieve their communicative objectives" (591).
His study of Sri Lankan Professor K. Sivatamby demonstrates this principle of "shuttling" creatively across Tamil and English for a variety of publication contexts. Dr. Sivatamby makes several rhetorical/linguistic choices to fit the contexts and audiences that he is addressing. One of the points that most interested me was how Dr. Sivatamby compensated for the dearth of library materials by managing genre constraints: avoiding a traditional literature review and engaging in his analysis quickly, using ethnography as well.
In essence, Canagarajah models the kind of analysis we can do of multilingualism and writing; however, a key constraint occurs when the researcher is not fluent in the writer's language (a further issue).
Matsuda's essay is an interesting counterpart to Berlin and other histories of rhetoric and writing instruction where international students are not a focal point or even much mentioned. This is, perhaps, another linguistic suppression: "The history of international ESL students in U.S.higher education goes at last as far back as 1784. . ." (644). In discussing the successive waves of international students, Matsuda sketches a view of the language curriculum that is tied as well to national policies and social and economic forces (WWI and WWII). I found it particularly interesting to see the discussion of how different colleges and universities handled the "integration" or "segregation" of international students (placement, credit-bearing and non-credit bearing courses, students "sprinkled" throughout sections or grouped together). I found Matsuda's historical analysis of linguistic homogeneity and international students to be very fruitful as it assesses the inner workings of linguistic "containment."
Matsuda ends with this analysis: "To work effectively with the student population in the twenty-first century, all composition teachers need to reimagine the composition classroom as the multingual space that it is, where the presence of language differences is the default" (649). Again, to echo my previous posting, what does it mean to reimagine the composition classroom as the multilingual space?" Just a couple of ideas:
--assignments that describe and analyze multilingual contexts?
--texts that are multilingual and in translation?
--research that involves multilingual texts?
--overlapping/linked courses in language and composition?
Others???
Works Cited:
Canagarajah, A. Suresh. "Toward a Writing Pedagogy of Shuttling between Languages: Learning from Multilingual Writers." _College English_ 68.6 (July 2006): 589-604.
Matsuda, Paul Kei. "The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition." _College English_. 68.6 (July 2006): 637-651.
Trimbur, John. "Linguistic Memory and the Politics of U.S. English." _College English_ 68.6 (July 2006): 575-588.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Multilingualism: a few additional questions
Laura's blog is chock full of interesting questions for us to consider in 601 on Tuesday. As I read over the special issue of CE July 2006 again, I kept wondering what a writing program cognizant of multilingualism--at all levels-- would look like?. As all the articles remind us, in one way or another, we are in disciplinary and programmatic settings where multilingualism is not necessarily valued--where the assumption is that linguistic competence is demonstrated in English. While many in our field will profess an allegiance to valuing various aspects of diversity, do we really value linguistic diversity? How is that defined? And what would a multilingual writing curriculum look like? I'm not asking this idly. I'm really wondering how to set up a first-year course and a writing curriculum that would work to value multilingualism?
I've had a number of classes where most of my students were multilingual. These were so-called "basic writing" classes at the community college and state university where I taught. Although I tried hard to acknowledge my students' facilities across languages, we ended up focusing on English. I tried to mine their language competence in other areas and drew on my own experiences as an exchange student trying to become fluent in French. Yet I feel I didn't do much beyond the anecdotal to do anything very deep with language study and multilingualism. I simply didn't know how, and when time was limited, I fell back on what I could do and what I knew best. I wonder what I missed out on, and I am also aware of my own limits when it comes to achieveing any sort of multilingualism. I took six semesters of college French, studied in France for a semester, and I have studied Spanish off and on for a number of years since high school (always losing ground because I don't keep up). It's so typical for many of us in the U.S. to feel linguistic security in being "English-only" speakers. I don't like that about being American. I can't believe how many times I met people in Europe and in Central America who spoke three or four different languages. Yet in America, we can get away with just one language and feel absolutely fine about it. Right now, I've been studying espanol in my spare minutes because I'm bound for Mexico in a few weeks, and I want to talk to people instead of making them reach over the linguistic divide to talk to me in English. Once again, I'm seeing my own limits as a student of more than one language: struggling to remember how to pronounce words, conjugate verbs, remember articles (feminine of masculine).
What I also wondered as I read through the articles again is how the question of multilingualism is also constructed/affected by the way "foreign language" instruction is handled in the United States--postponed until later in a child's education when developmentally mastering a language is much harder? And there is also the question of America's position as a global superpower and the assumption that English will be the language that everyone will strive for because of America's economic position. Linguistic economics. So composition studies reflects those assumptions rather than being unique in its expectations. A reform of composition studies would likely necessitate a reform of the whole of language instruction (K-12, too) as well, but in the meantime, we could do a lot more as a field.
It was said that 1 in 4 people in the U.S. are multilingual. So if we sort that out in our classrooms, will we find the same statistics?
I have more to say and some notes to post, but it is late, and I have to get to sleep. Don't believe the time stamp on this blog posting. The time stamps have been way off lately.
I've had a number of classes where most of my students were multilingual. These were so-called "basic writing" classes at the community college and state university where I taught. Although I tried hard to acknowledge my students' facilities across languages, we ended up focusing on English. I tried to mine their language competence in other areas and drew on my own experiences as an exchange student trying to become fluent in French. Yet I feel I didn't do much beyond the anecdotal to do anything very deep with language study and multilingualism. I simply didn't know how, and when time was limited, I fell back on what I could do and what I knew best. I wonder what I missed out on, and I am also aware of my own limits when it comes to achieveing any sort of multilingualism. I took six semesters of college French, studied in France for a semester, and I have studied Spanish off and on for a number of years since high school (always losing ground because I don't keep up). It's so typical for many of us in the U.S. to feel linguistic security in being "English-only" speakers. I don't like that about being American. I can't believe how many times I met people in Europe and in Central America who spoke three or four different languages. Yet in America, we can get away with just one language and feel absolutely fine about it. Right now, I've been studying espanol in my spare minutes because I'm bound for Mexico in a few weeks, and I want to talk to people instead of making them reach over the linguistic divide to talk to me in English. Once again, I'm seeing my own limits as a student of more than one language: struggling to remember how to pronounce words, conjugate verbs, remember articles (feminine of masculine).
What I also wondered as I read through the articles again is how the question of multilingualism is also constructed/affected by the way "foreign language" instruction is handled in the United States--postponed until later in a child's education when developmentally mastering a language is much harder? And there is also the question of America's position as a global superpower and the assumption that English will be the language that everyone will strive for because of America's economic position. Linguistic economics. So composition studies reflects those assumptions rather than being unique in its expectations. A reform of composition studies would likely necessitate a reform of the whole of language instruction (K-12, too) as well, but in the meantime, we could do a lot more as a field.
It was said that 1 in 4 people in the U.S. are multilingual. So if we sort that out in our classrooms, will we find the same statistics?
I have more to say and some notes to post, but it is late, and I have to get to sleep. Don't believe the time stamp on this blog posting. The time stamps have been way off lately.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Stalag 7A and Life as a POW during WWII
Dr. Sidney Thomas of the Nottingham Senior Living Community in Jamesville, NY gave a captivating lecture to over 50 people this past Wednesday. The Writers' Group, which I have facilitated at the Nottingham for the past six years, sponsored his lecture, and I had the pleasure of introducing Dr. Thomas. Dr. Thomas was Private First Class Sidney Thomas of the U.S. Army infantry during WWII. He and four other men were captured by German soldiers in a foxhole after the allied invasion of Germany. They were transported to Stalag 7A where they were kept for five months until the end of the war. When Dr. Thomas was captured and interrogated by an English interpreter working for the German command, he was asked for his religious background. He answered with no compunction that he was Jewish despite his friends warning to not do so. He was treated no differently than the other soldiers, for the most part, the Geneva Convention mostly followed. He gave his name and rank, but no other information.
More on Stalag 7A is available at:
http://www.303rdbg.com/pow-camps.html#stalag7a
Stalag 7A was not a luxury hotel: near starvation rations, no heat, no showers. Dr. Thomas took one shower during the five month period. He later thinks about what the "showers" meant in Germany--the death campus and those told to strip and take a shower. Fortunately, the shower was just that--a real shower, not a cover for the gas chambers. He didn't mention lice as a daily feature of life, but we could imagine what no bathing meant. The prisoners lived on potato soup and ersatz bread. They were kept from starvation by eating food from the Red Cross packages that came through occasionally. They traded the cigarettes that were in the Red Cross packages for bread that German civilians had when they were sent out on work details to Munich.
Having met others who were kept in the prison camps who were mostly aviators (officers), I find it interesting to see how an enlisted infantry man like Thomas was treated. The officers usually were not sent out on work detail. The prisoners in 7A who were enlisted men (not officers) were regularly sent out on work detail to Munich, which had been severely bombed. They were supposed to pick up bomb debris, but as Sidney put it, they were so weak from hunger that they were totally ineffectual. They also were not going to help out the Nazi regime more than they had to, doing only the minimum. According to Sidney, the German guards, mostly middle-aged men, did not really care that much. They were not paying real close attention when the GIs traded cigarettes for bread or when they poked around at picking up debris. Sidney told of a German woman passing him and putting a bun in his pocket and saying nothing. He still wonders to this day what she was thinking and why she was helping him. He also talked to German women who asked him what American prison camps were like since they had husbands incarcerated there. "They are getting more to eat than you are, " said Sidney with conviction.
As the war approached the end, Sidney and some of his fellow GIs were told to live in railroad cars in the Munich train yards. The prison camp was overcrowded with prisoners who had been moved from other camps as the allies advanced. Sidney now looks back on the "train cars" with some trepidation for the cars were how so many Jews were transported to the death camps. But Sidney and his fellow GIs survived living in the train cars, locked in every night and only let out when there were bomb raids on the yards. This was the most terrifying moment for Sidney and fellow GIs as there were no bomb shelters for them. They hid in ditches while allied bombs fell. All miraculously survived.
As the Americans neared Munich, Sidney and his fellow GIs were able to move about more freely. The German guards deserted and even offered them their weapons, which they feared taking since doing so might be a provocation. The only time Sidney felt afraid was when they saw some uniformed SS men in the town center glaring at them. Fortunately, nothing happened. At that point, the Germans knew defeat was imminent, and he supposed the SS men had had enough of the killing or were out of ammunition that day.
I was struck by how unafraid Sidney said he was in German custody. The Geneva Convention still held then (look at what a shambles it is now), and the imprisoned men were confident of the end of the war and allied victory. While he was made to work, he was not threatened or goaded into working past capacity. The worst was the near starvation. The prisoners thought about food all the time. The main subject in the camp was food, not the usual "sex and gripes about the Army," which Sidney said was the standard fare when they were fighting the war. Other prisoners were kept there, too: French, English, Russians.
When the American motorized divisions roared into Munich, Sidney ran alongside a tank and waved and was recognized as an American GI by one of the soldiers. They soldier said: "Hey, buddy, where the hell are we? " The soldier on the tank had no clue they were taking Munich. This was typical, according to Sidney. "The grunts never knew where they were. Only the officers. You moved out and followed orders. Later, you figured out where you were after you got there."
Sidney's also described various ethical dilemmas he faced in the camp, which I can describe in another posting. Again, I feel fortunate to be part of the Nottingham community where presentations like this one--an interaction around life experience and living history--is a regular event. I also feel fortunate to have met a new colleague. Dr. Thomas is a retired SU faculty member (1961-1985 he taught here).
More on Stalag 7A is available at:
http://www.303rdbg.com/pow-camps.html#stalag7a
Stalag 7A was not a luxury hotel: near starvation rations, no heat, no showers. Dr. Thomas took one shower during the five month period. He later thinks about what the "showers" meant in Germany--the death campus and those told to strip and take a shower. Fortunately, the shower was just that--a real shower, not a cover for the gas chambers. He didn't mention lice as a daily feature of life, but we could imagine what no bathing meant. The prisoners lived on potato soup and ersatz bread. They were kept from starvation by eating food from the Red Cross packages that came through occasionally. They traded the cigarettes that were in the Red Cross packages for bread that German civilians had when they were sent out on work details to Munich.
Having met others who were kept in the prison camps who were mostly aviators (officers), I find it interesting to see how an enlisted infantry man like Thomas was treated. The officers usually were not sent out on work detail. The prisoners in 7A who were enlisted men (not officers) were regularly sent out on work detail to Munich, which had been severely bombed. They were supposed to pick up bomb debris, but as Sidney put it, they were so weak from hunger that they were totally ineffectual. They also were not going to help out the Nazi regime more than they had to, doing only the minimum. According to Sidney, the German guards, mostly middle-aged men, did not really care that much. They were not paying real close attention when the GIs traded cigarettes for bread or when they poked around at picking up debris. Sidney told of a German woman passing him and putting a bun in his pocket and saying nothing. He still wonders to this day what she was thinking and why she was helping him. He also talked to German women who asked him what American prison camps were like since they had husbands incarcerated there. "They are getting more to eat than you are, " said Sidney with conviction.
As the war approached the end, Sidney and some of his fellow GIs were told to live in railroad cars in the Munich train yards. The prison camp was overcrowded with prisoners who had been moved from other camps as the allies advanced. Sidney now looks back on the "train cars" with some trepidation for the cars were how so many Jews were transported to the death camps. But Sidney and his fellow GIs survived living in the train cars, locked in every night and only let out when there were bomb raids on the yards. This was the most terrifying moment for Sidney and fellow GIs as there were no bomb shelters for them. They hid in ditches while allied bombs fell. All miraculously survived.
As the Americans neared Munich, Sidney and his fellow GIs were able to move about more freely. The German guards deserted and even offered them their weapons, which they feared taking since doing so might be a provocation. The only time Sidney felt afraid was when they saw some uniformed SS men in the town center glaring at them. Fortunately, nothing happened. At that point, the Germans knew defeat was imminent, and he supposed the SS men had had enough of the killing or were out of ammunition that day.
I was struck by how unafraid Sidney said he was in German custody. The Geneva Convention still held then (look at what a shambles it is now), and the imprisoned men were confident of the end of the war and allied victory. While he was made to work, he was not threatened or goaded into working past capacity. The worst was the near starvation. The prisoners thought about food all the time. The main subject in the camp was food, not the usual "sex and gripes about the Army," which Sidney said was the standard fare when they were fighting the war. Other prisoners were kept there, too: French, English, Russians.
When the American motorized divisions roared into Munich, Sidney ran alongside a tank and waved and was recognized as an American GI by one of the soldiers. They soldier said: "Hey, buddy, where the hell are we? " The soldier on the tank had no clue they were taking Munich. This was typical, according to Sidney. "The grunts never knew where they were. Only the officers. You moved out and followed orders. Later, you figured out where you were after you got there."
Sidney's also described various ethical dilemmas he faced in the camp, which I can describe in another posting. Again, I feel fortunate to be part of the Nottingham community where presentations like this one--an interaction around life experience and living history--is a regular event. I also feel fortunate to have met a new colleague. Dr. Thomas is a retired SU faculty member (1961-1985 he taught here).
Writing Space(s)
It's such a pleasure to read Jay Bolter's second edition of _Writing Space_. He skillfully moves between an analysis of digital culture and print culture, moving back and forth across time and history to the almost current moment. I like how he places papyrus and codex alongside hypertexts. The juxtaposition is highly effective as it demonstrates his principle of remediation. What I'd like to do here is highlight some definitions in the first couple of chapters. My purpose is to anchor myself moreso in some of his claims/statements.
First off, the idea of writing spaces and space, the focal point of the title and much of the book.
Bolter argues that the spatial metaphor for writing and reading is as culturally powerful now as it has ever been" (12). When we speak of the Internet, we talk about "cyberspace." We speak of "visiting" websites (introducing the idea of "traveling" from one place to another). I think of a recent post I wrote that invited people to visit "Tanya's place," her blog in the "blogosphere." A writing space "is a material and visual field, whose properties are determined by a writing technology and the uses to which that technology is put by a culture of readers and writers. A writing space is generated by the interaction of material properties and cultural choices and practices" (12).
Now what does this all mean for electronic or digital spaces? Bolter says "[t]he space of electronic writing is both the computer screen, where text is displayed, and the electronic memory in which the text is stored. Our culture has chosen to fashion these technologies into a writing space that is animated, visualy complex, and malleable in the hands of both writer and reader" (13). Later, when I blog the info. about hypertext and hypermediation, this idea will come out further.
Bolter notes at the end of Chapter 1 that "[w]ith any technique of writing--on stone, on clay, on papyrus or paper, and on the computer screen--the writer may come to regard the mind itself as a writing space. The behavior of the writing space becomes a metaphor for the human mind as well as for human social interaction" (13).
Also, present in Chapter 1 is a meditation on the types of rhetoric that are out there about "the future of print" (4-5). There are the enthusiasts who predict the "end of the book" and the triumphant ascendacy of digital environments (Kurzweil, for instance, see Bolter, pp. 4) and then there are critics who discount the idea that print culture will be overtaken by digital environments. Bolter cites writer Annie Proulx's 1994 comment that no one will want to read a novel on a "twitchy screen" (5). In some ways, Proulx is too easy a mark. It's easy enough to prove her wrong when electronic books are available and Questia online holds many scholarly books available for access through subscription (not to mention digital/hypertext novels). Among the critics are the critical boundary setters who insist on "sensible limits to the computerization of culture" (5), Slouka, for instance. There seem to be the elegaic apocalyptics such as Birkerts who lament "the passing of the traditional literary culture" (6).
Bolter has highlighted the extremes here, and his purpose is not to indicate whether he thinks one is true over the other. Rather, his point is to avoid siding with specific predictions or wallowing in them, but to instead ask a more complex and interesting question about how we can "try to understand the current relationship between print and digital media" (7).
"It is not a question of seeing writing as an external technology force that influences or changes cultural practice; instead, writing is always a part of culture. It is probably best to understand all technologies in this way; technologies do not determine the course of culture or society, because they are not separate agents that can act on culture from the outside" (19). In other words, we need to avoid technological determinism, the idea of "technology" as an external force driving society when it is a human creation with particular goals and outcomes (not necessarily visible or understandable). I hear this same kind of deterministic rhetoric in relation to the idea of the "market" (the economy) as somehow external (an external force) outside of human endeavor. The "market" will tell us x, y, or z.
"Individuals and whole cultures do mold techniques and devices to their own purposes, but the material properties of such techniques and devices also impose limitations on their possible uses" (20).
One medium "remediates" the other, e.g., when there was the shift from "handwritten codex to printed book" (23). This is the process Bolter refers to as remediation" when " a new medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space" (23). The new medium brings with it specific aspects of the old one but "also makes an implicit or explicit claim to improve on the older one" (23).
Finally "[t]he best way to understand electronic writing today is to see if as the remediation of printed text, with its claim to refashioning the presentation and status of alphabetic writing itself" (26).
As Bolter points out, we live in a media saturated culture where "claims of greater immediacy are constantly being made, as new and older media view for our attention" (26).
What I really like about his first two chapters is the attention to language and terminology AND rhetorics of technology. He doesn't fall into the well-worn trap of the critic or the determinist/enthusiast. He stays true to the research question that drives this project: understanding the relationship between print and digital texts.
There is way more to say, but I have to go to the craft store to find mermaid stickers for Autumn. More later....
First off, the idea of writing spaces and space, the focal point of the title and much of the book.
Bolter argues that the spatial metaphor for writing and reading is as culturally powerful now as it has ever been" (12). When we speak of the Internet, we talk about "cyberspace." We speak of "visiting" websites (introducing the idea of "traveling" from one place to another). I think of a recent post I wrote that invited people to visit "Tanya's place," her blog in the "blogosphere." A writing space "is a material and visual field, whose properties are determined by a writing technology and the uses to which that technology is put by a culture of readers and writers. A writing space is generated by the interaction of material properties and cultural choices and practices" (12).
Now what does this all mean for electronic or digital spaces? Bolter says "[t]he space of electronic writing is both the computer screen, where text is displayed, and the electronic memory in which the text is stored. Our culture has chosen to fashion these technologies into a writing space that is animated, visualy complex, and malleable in the hands of both writer and reader" (13). Later, when I blog the info. about hypertext and hypermediation, this idea will come out further.
Bolter notes at the end of Chapter 1 that "[w]ith any technique of writing--on stone, on clay, on papyrus or paper, and on the computer screen--the writer may come to regard the mind itself as a writing space. The behavior of the writing space becomes a metaphor for the human mind as well as for human social interaction" (13).
Also, present in Chapter 1 is a meditation on the types of rhetoric that are out there about "the future of print" (4-5). There are the enthusiasts who predict the "end of the book" and the triumphant ascendacy of digital environments (Kurzweil, for instance, see Bolter, pp. 4) and then there are critics who discount the idea that print culture will be overtaken by digital environments. Bolter cites writer Annie Proulx's 1994 comment that no one will want to read a novel on a "twitchy screen" (5). In some ways, Proulx is too easy a mark. It's easy enough to prove her wrong when electronic books are available and Questia online holds many scholarly books available for access through subscription (not to mention digital/hypertext novels). Among the critics are the critical boundary setters who insist on "sensible limits to the computerization of culture" (5), Slouka, for instance. There seem to be the elegaic apocalyptics such as Birkerts who lament "the passing of the traditional literary culture" (6).
Bolter has highlighted the extremes here, and his purpose is not to indicate whether he thinks one is true over the other. Rather, his point is to avoid siding with specific predictions or wallowing in them, but to instead ask a more complex and interesting question about how we can "try to understand the current relationship between print and digital media" (7).
"It is not a question of seeing writing as an external technology force that influences or changes cultural practice; instead, writing is always a part of culture. It is probably best to understand all technologies in this way; technologies do not determine the course of culture or society, because they are not separate agents that can act on culture from the outside" (19). In other words, we need to avoid technological determinism, the idea of "technology" as an external force driving society when it is a human creation with particular goals and outcomes (not necessarily visible or understandable). I hear this same kind of deterministic rhetoric in relation to the idea of the "market" (the economy) as somehow external (an external force) outside of human endeavor. The "market" will tell us x, y, or z.
"Individuals and whole cultures do mold techniques and devices to their own purposes, but the material properties of such techniques and devices also impose limitations on their possible uses" (20).
One medium "remediates" the other, e.g., when there was the shift from "handwritten codex to printed book" (23). This is the process Bolter refers to as remediation" when " a new medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space" (23). The new medium brings with it specific aspects of the old one but "also makes an implicit or explicit claim to improve on the older one" (23).
Finally "[t]he best way to understand electronic writing today is to see if as the remediation of printed text, with its claim to refashioning the presentation and status of alphabetic writing itself" (26).
As Bolter points out, we live in a media saturated culture where "claims of greater immediacy are constantly being made, as new and older media view for our attention" (26).
What I really like about his first two chapters is the attention to language and terminology AND rhetorics of technology. He doesn't fall into the well-worn trap of the critic or the determinist/enthusiast. He stays true to the research question that drives this project: understanding the relationship between print and digital texts.
There is way more to say, but I have to go to the craft store to find mermaid stickers for Autumn. More later....
Escaping to the library
Chris and Susan's library stories (in response to my post on being read to) made me think of the libraries of my childhood: the Cashmere public library, the Vale Elementary school library, and the rural circulating library we had access to in my hometown. Here are some stories, some of which I've written down in the past and some newer ones:
The Cashmere public library is a building the size of a small two bedroom ranch house, its shelves filled with books shrouded in crackling plastic dust jackets. There were five sections: the children's, the young adult, the adult fiction, and the adult nonfiction and reference. Small tables with fake varnished wood tops and vinyl chairs provided seldom-used reading space. Sheila Ogle, town librarian, presided over all, her beehive bobbing efficiently over the stacks of books she checked out to schoolteachers, farm wives, migrant farm workers, and gangly farm kids like me. There was something open and refreshing about Sheila. The previous librarian whom my brother and I had nicknamed Mrs. Applefuss, had been a retired school teacher, stooped, frail with a gray bun, orthopedic oxfords, and a prominent red apple brooch that clasped the top button of her shirtwaist. Checking out a stack of books with Mrs. Applefuss had been an experience in correction as she frequently marked misspellings and omitted words on library check-out slips. In contrast, Sheila was young and chatted breezily as she checked out books. Petite and only twenty-six years old, she drove a 1969 lime green Camaro with wide mag wheels and white pinwalls. She liked to speed to work on Highway 2, dipping over the white line, a careless habit that earned her many tickets. Her husband Randy, a placid cornfed looking farm boy in the glass business often drove her to work to avoid the white line incidents.
Every weekday morning at nine a.m., Sheila, in her homemade miniskirts, unlocked the front door of the Cashmere library, her platform shoes making stompy clonks as she swung open the plate glass door, flung down the open sign, and began business for the day. I was one of Sheila's pet projects, a fixture in the young adult section of the library where I was determined at age twelve to read "the classics". Sheila was all for the idea of my education in the classics. When I showed her the "classic reading list" I had discovered on the back of the "What Katy Did" series, she encouraged the project, handing me copies of _Silas Marner_ and _Wuthering Heights_.
"Start here," she said, flicking back a strand of her streaked blond beehive.
I remember laboring over the books one dry summer on the farm, my jean clad legs swung over the side of the gold loveseat. Far away in a nineteenth century British world, people spoke proper, clipped English. What stayed with me most was Heathcliff's terribleness, his gnashing teeth.
"It's a terrible story," I remarked to Sheila after returning the book.
"It's a love story," she said.
Neither of us knew what we were talking about. Twelve years later I wrote my master's thesis on _Wuthering Heights_.
When I wasn't fumbling my way through the "classics," I read with abandon the books in the young adult fiction section. When I wasn't reading books, I hungered for them. I needed books like some of my classmates needed that first school recess of the day; they rushed outside as if they had been penned. Although I could choose books from the school library, I hesitated to exercise my full reading habits in front of my peers as my love of reading made me the object of teasing and ridicule.
The teasing began in the third grade when I checked out a four hundred page book about Paul Bunyan. I had wandered through the library, as usual, searching for books to take home to read in the evening. I passed shelf after shelf of thin, insubstantial books with bright racy covers and thin much-read tattered ones. I felt myself always in a state of perpetual disappointment at the "chapter books" that were thought appropriately challenging for elementary schoolers. Those chapters were mostly made of air, I concluded, as I sped over the white pages with scanty clumps of large print black letters and the large colored pictures or black and white drawings that were thought to be necessary for kids. I needed a long book. A book full of lines and lines of black print, few white spaces, and few or no pictures. The Paul Bunyan book sat plumply, importantly in the midst of the thin books. It felt solid and meaty in my hand. I checked it out and brought it back to the school room.
At the end of the day, I stood at the doorway of the classroom in the kid-line-up waiting to march out to the bus; idly, I wondered what my mother would cook for dinner that night. My big-headed but affable classmate Pat noticed the book as we stood waiting.
"How many pages?" he said, fingering the side of the book crooked in my arm.
I looked in the back and saw the book ended at page 430. "Four hundred and thirty,” I said, with no hint of bragging in my voice. I was as matter-of-fact about books as I was about peanut butter sandwiches and carrots sticks I found in my school lunch bag
. Pat seemed impressed, but Pat's companions the dark-haired, freckled David and sandy-haired Scott hooted: "430 pages, 430 pages?"
"How long will it take you to read that book?" Scott asked.
The question hung in the air as the dismissal bell rang, and we dashed through the hallways toward the bus area. My book crooked under my arm, I did my best to keep to a fast trot, far enough in front of Scott and David but not far enough to avoid their calls of "bookworm."
That night when I sat down in the living room after clearing the supper table, I read determinedly, my eyes flying over the words, scarcely caring about the story. It was full of embellishments and posturing, anyway: Paul chopping down whole forests with one stroke of his ax, eating huge stacks of flapjacks, fighting off bears and wolves. My father told better hunting stories. I fell asleep over the book, my mom shaking me gently at 10: 00 p.m. I climbed the bare wooden stairs to my room, the book heavy in my hand. With great effort, I awoke early the next morning and read more pages. I reached page 100 when it was time to get dressed and go off to school. Scott and David were waiting for me in the reading classroom that morning.
"How many pages, bookworm?"
"One hundred," I said primly, brushing past them on my way to my desk.
They danced a jig and slapped each other's hands, chanting "A hundred pages! A hundred pages! Bookworm read a hundred pages!"
As usual, in my reading course, I finished my vocabulary sheets, spelling test, and reading lesson early. I went to the back reading corner. The Paul Bunyan book felt heavier than I remembered it, and I looked longingly at the other books in the "book corner." I dutifully read 15 pages while my classmates finished their work and as Scott and David looked back and snickered .
Every school afternoon and evening that week, I read the Paul Bunyan book. I read it after school instead of playing outside, I read it after dinner instead of watching TV. I read it early in the morning while my sister still slept and the sun crept up over the ridge of the Wenatchee Mountains, the dawn making the room light enough for reading. During the day, I was tired and listless but resolved as I did my school assignments and played with classmates. I was getting the day's work out of the way. All my energies were focused on finishing the book. Each day for four days I read one hundred pages; I finished the last thirty on Friday morning--fifteen before breakfast, fifteen during reading class. I thumped the book down on the desk. and slumped in my school chair, my head awhirl with Paul Bunyan's and Babe the Blue Ox's feats.
"She's done," Scott whispered. She read the whole book!”
My other classmates took notice, and I was teased for weeks after that. "Eileen read 400 pages in four days. Bookworm!!" After that, the feat was increased to 600 to 800 then to 1,000 pages, my appetite for reading taking on elephantine proportions. For a while, when the reading class visited the school library, Scott and David followed me from shelf to shelf.. They peered over the stacks to comment on the thickness of the books I selected. After I set a book down, they'd sneak over and pick it up and quickly flip to the back page to see how long it was, announcing the page total and laughing. Although I pretended to ignore them, I could see that my love of reading simultaneously interested and bothered them.
Indeed, my reading habits made me unpredictable and unpopular with some of my classmates. I knew words that others didn't, and I had a habit of springing those words on them in sharp and unaccustomed ways. After a girl-boy chase and scuffle on the playground, little boys often scratched their heads, wondering why I'd called them "cretins" or "gargoyles," words I'd acquired form reading my parent's National Geographic magazines. I was always trying out those words when I could, stumbling over their pronunciations, rivaling in their importance without quite being sure what they meant. Words were my ladder, my way out.
My reading minimally disturbed my family; they worried I was too pale and deemed me the "house pansy" for the long afternoons I spent reading on the gold loveseat in the living room. But they liked to read, too, so their complaints were minor. On holidays and on long winter evenings, my father read whole books often in one sitting--long political biographies and historical works When he liked a book, he wouldn't put it down. "I'll annihilate it," he'd say and he'd stay up long past his farmer's prescribed bed time, even after my mom turned down the heat and the house grew cold and the only light shining was the living room lamp illuminating the floor where he lay on the carpet, his head propped up with a brown fake fur covered pillow. After midnight, he'd stagger up to bed, shaking with the cold, half-drunk on language and complex political plot and then he'd read in bed unless my mom protested too much.
My mother read pop-psychology books, diet books, books on theology , and turned us on to the phrases she was learning at the Yokefellow encounter groups she and my father attended at the Methodist church. We learned dream analysis, transactional analysis and "role-playing." We analyzed dream symbols and underwent meditation exercises. My mother grew more and more liberated as the weeks went by. She got a lock for her bedroom door and went up there every afternoon to spend time alone.
Sensing a break in the motherly status quo, I protested:. "What will happen if I fall down the stairs and break my leg?"
"I think I'd hear you fall down the stairs and scream even with the door locked," my mother said flatly. "You kids have to give me some time alone. I need to read and think."
I grew up believing all farm wives fought for the space to read and think.
My brother belonged to the Military Book Club, and he devoured books on World War II and piled up his hardback club acquisitions on the fake walnut paneled shelves in his room next to his ammunition reloading equipment. My brother lived for war stories, and his vocabulary was peppered with precise military terms often ill-pronounced. Confiscate was pronouned "confisticate" and magazine was pronounced "mazagine."
Even my sister, busy as she was with her piano playing and track meets, read her bible and fashion magazines, and she kept a journal under her mattress that I read and thought about, barely keeping myself from advising her about which friends she should keep and which she should eliminate.
Reading was a fortification against the sameness and monotony of farm life. A book took us places when we couldn't get there any other way, and it let us get into someone else's head for awhile.
Since my reading habits were such an object of fun for many of my classmates, I concealed the true volume of my reading by ordering titles from the rural circulating library book catalogue. My mother explained that the rural circulating library was an attempt to reach the kids and adults who lived "in the brush," too far away from libraries or book stores. I imagined these bookless kids living in log cabins or in lone farmhouses at the end of winding canyon roads. With the library just four miles away from the farm, I felt as if I were cheating by ordering those books and possibly denying them to farm kids like Trina and Sandy Wallace who lived up at the end of Ollalla Canyon without running water or electricity. The guilt only lasted so long. I received those paperback titles in brown paper envelopes like Christmas gifts from distant relatives. I fell upon them when I got home from school and read them long into the night. I read about teen girls and boys who attended boarding schools in Boston. I read about girls living in apartment buildings in New York City. They rode subways, walked city blocks, and dined at the automat. I was hungry for knowledge of how others my age lived. I hoarded these bits of information like a raven keeping a cache of shiny objects.
The Cashmere public library is a building the size of a small two bedroom ranch house, its shelves filled with books shrouded in crackling plastic dust jackets. There were five sections: the children's, the young adult, the adult fiction, and the adult nonfiction and reference. Small tables with fake varnished wood tops and vinyl chairs provided seldom-used reading space. Sheila Ogle, town librarian, presided over all, her beehive bobbing efficiently over the stacks of books she checked out to schoolteachers, farm wives, migrant farm workers, and gangly farm kids like me. There was something open and refreshing about Sheila. The previous librarian whom my brother and I had nicknamed Mrs. Applefuss, had been a retired school teacher, stooped, frail with a gray bun, orthopedic oxfords, and a prominent red apple brooch that clasped the top button of her shirtwaist. Checking out a stack of books with Mrs. Applefuss had been an experience in correction as she frequently marked misspellings and omitted words on library check-out slips. In contrast, Sheila was young and chatted breezily as she checked out books. Petite and only twenty-six years old, she drove a 1969 lime green Camaro with wide mag wheels and white pinwalls. She liked to speed to work on Highway 2, dipping over the white line, a careless habit that earned her many tickets. Her husband Randy, a placid cornfed looking farm boy in the glass business often drove her to work to avoid the white line incidents.
Every weekday morning at nine a.m., Sheila, in her homemade miniskirts, unlocked the front door of the Cashmere library, her platform shoes making stompy clonks as she swung open the plate glass door, flung down the open sign, and began business for the day. I was one of Sheila's pet projects, a fixture in the young adult section of the library where I was determined at age twelve to read "the classics". Sheila was all for the idea of my education in the classics. When I showed her the "classic reading list" I had discovered on the back of the "What Katy Did" series, she encouraged the project, handing me copies of _Silas Marner_ and _Wuthering Heights_.
"Start here," she said, flicking back a strand of her streaked blond beehive.
I remember laboring over the books one dry summer on the farm, my jean clad legs swung over the side of the gold loveseat. Far away in a nineteenth century British world, people spoke proper, clipped English. What stayed with me most was Heathcliff's terribleness, his gnashing teeth.
"It's a terrible story," I remarked to Sheila after returning the book.
"It's a love story," she said.
Neither of us knew what we were talking about. Twelve years later I wrote my master's thesis on _Wuthering Heights_.
When I wasn't fumbling my way through the "classics," I read with abandon the books in the young adult fiction section. When I wasn't reading books, I hungered for them. I needed books like some of my classmates needed that first school recess of the day; they rushed outside as if they had been penned. Although I could choose books from the school library, I hesitated to exercise my full reading habits in front of my peers as my love of reading made me the object of teasing and ridicule.
The teasing began in the third grade when I checked out a four hundred page book about Paul Bunyan. I had wandered through the library, as usual, searching for books to take home to read in the evening. I passed shelf after shelf of thin, insubstantial books with bright racy covers and thin much-read tattered ones. I felt myself always in a state of perpetual disappointment at the "chapter books" that were thought appropriately challenging for elementary schoolers. Those chapters were mostly made of air, I concluded, as I sped over the white pages with scanty clumps of large print black letters and the large colored pictures or black and white drawings that were thought to be necessary for kids. I needed a long book. A book full of lines and lines of black print, few white spaces, and few or no pictures. The Paul Bunyan book sat plumply, importantly in the midst of the thin books. It felt solid and meaty in my hand. I checked it out and brought it back to the school room.
At the end of the day, I stood at the doorway of the classroom in the kid-line-up waiting to march out to the bus; idly, I wondered what my mother would cook for dinner that night. My big-headed but affable classmate Pat noticed the book as we stood waiting.
"How many pages?" he said, fingering the side of the book crooked in my arm.
I looked in the back and saw the book ended at page 430. "Four hundred and thirty,” I said, with no hint of bragging in my voice. I was as matter-of-fact about books as I was about peanut butter sandwiches and carrots sticks I found in my school lunch bag
. Pat seemed impressed, but Pat's companions the dark-haired, freckled David and sandy-haired Scott hooted: "430 pages, 430 pages?"
"How long will it take you to read that book?" Scott asked.
The question hung in the air as the dismissal bell rang, and we dashed through the hallways toward the bus area. My book crooked under my arm, I did my best to keep to a fast trot, far enough in front of Scott and David but not far enough to avoid their calls of "bookworm."
That night when I sat down in the living room after clearing the supper table, I read determinedly, my eyes flying over the words, scarcely caring about the story. It was full of embellishments and posturing, anyway: Paul chopping down whole forests with one stroke of his ax, eating huge stacks of flapjacks, fighting off bears and wolves. My father told better hunting stories. I fell asleep over the book, my mom shaking me gently at 10: 00 p.m. I climbed the bare wooden stairs to my room, the book heavy in my hand. With great effort, I awoke early the next morning and read more pages. I reached page 100 when it was time to get dressed and go off to school. Scott and David were waiting for me in the reading classroom that morning.
"How many pages, bookworm?"
"One hundred," I said primly, brushing past them on my way to my desk.
They danced a jig and slapped each other's hands, chanting "A hundred pages! A hundred pages! Bookworm read a hundred pages!"
As usual, in my reading course, I finished my vocabulary sheets, spelling test, and reading lesson early. I went to the back reading corner. The Paul Bunyan book felt heavier than I remembered it, and I looked longingly at the other books in the "book corner." I dutifully read 15 pages while my classmates finished their work and as Scott and David looked back and snickered .
Every school afternoon and evening that week, I read the Paul Bunyan book. I read it after school instead of playing outside, I read it after dinner instead of watching TV. I read it early in the morning while my sister still slept and the sun crept up over the ridge of the Wenatchee Mountains, the dawn making the room light enough for reading. During the day, I was tired and listless but resolved as I did my school assignments and played with classmates. I was getting the day's work out of the way. All my energies were focused on finishing the book. Each day for four days I read one hundred pages; I finished the last thirty on Friday morning--fifteen before breakfast, fifteen during reading class. I thumped the book down on the desk. and slumped in my school chair, my head awhirl with Paul Bunyan's and Babe the Blue Ox's feats.
"She's done," Scott whispered. She read the whole book!”
My other classmates took notice, and I was teased for weeks after that. "Eileen read 400 pages in four days. Bookworm!!" After that, the feat was increased to 600 to 800 then to 1,000 pages, my appetite for reading taking on elephantine proportions. For a while, when the reading class visited the school library, Scott and David followed me from shelf to shelf.. They peered over the stacks to comment on the thickness of the books I selected. After I set a book down, they'd sneak over and pick it up and quickly flip to the back page to see how long it was, announcing the page total and laughing. Although I pretended to ignore them, I could see that my love of reading simultaneously interested and bothered them.
Indeed, my reading habits made me unpredictable and unpopular with some of my classmates. I knew words that others didn't, and I had a habit of springing those words on them in sharp and unaccustomed ways. After a girl-boy chase and scuffle on the playground, little boys often scratched their heads, wondering why I'd called them "cretins" or "gargoyles," words I'd acquired form reading my parent's National Geographic magazines. I was always trying out those words when I could, stumbling over their pronunciations, rivaling in their importance without quite being sure what they meant. Words were my ladder, my way out.
My reading minimally disturbed my family; they worried I was too pale and deemed me the "house pansy" for the long afternoons I spent reading on the gold loveseat in the living room. But they liked to read, too, so their complaints were minor. On holidays and on long winter evenings, my father read whole books often in one sitting--long political biographies and historical works When he liked a book, he wouldn't put it down. "I'll annihilate it," he'd say and he'd stay up long past his farmer's prescribed bed time, even after my mom turned down the heat and the house grew cold and the only light shining was the living room lamp illuminating the floor where he lay on the carpet, his head propped up with a brown fake fur covered pillow. After midnight, he'd stagger up to bed, shaking with the cold, half-drunk on language and complex political plot and then he'd read in bed unless my mom protested too much.
My mother read pop-psychology books, diet books, books on theology , and turned us on to the phrases she was learning at the Yokefellow encounter groups she and my father attended at the Methodist church. We learned dream analysis, transactional analysis and "role-playing." We analyzed dream symbols and underwent meditation exercises. My mother grew more and more liberated as the weeks went by. She got a lock for her bedroom door and went up there every afternoon to spend time alone.
Sensing a break in the motherly status quo, I protested:. "What will happen if I fall down the stairs and break my leg?"
"I think I'd hear you fall down the stairs and scream even with the door locked," my mother said flatly. "You kids have to give me some time alone. I need to read and think."
I grew up believing all farm wives fought for the space to read and think.
My brother belonged to the Military Book Club, and he devoured books on World War II and piled up his hardback club acquisitions on the fake walnut paneled shelves in his room next to his ammunition reloading equipment. My brother lived for war stories, and his vocabulary was peppered with precise military terms often ill-pronounced. Confiscate was pronouned "confisticate" and magazine was pronounced "mazagine."
Even my sister, busy as she was with her piano playing and track meets, read her bible and fashion magazines, and she kept a journal under her mattress that I read and thought about, barely keeping myself from advising her about which friends she should keep and which she should eliminate.
Reading was a fortification against the sameness and monotony of farm life. A book took us places when we couldn't get there any other way, and it let us get into someone else's head for awhile.
Since my reading habits were such an object of fun for many of my classmates, I concealed the true volume of my reading by ordering titles from the rural circulating library book catalogue. My mother explained that the rural circulating library was an attempt to reach the kids and adults who lived "in the brush," too far away from libraries or book stores. I imagined these bookless kids living in log cabins or in lone farmhouses at the end of winding canyon roads. With the library just four miles away from the farm, I felt as if I were cheating by ordering those books and possibly denying them to farm kids like Trina and Sandy Wallace who lived up at the end of Ollalla Canyon without running water or electricity. The guilt only lasted so long. I received those paperback titles in brown paper envelopes like Christmas gifts from distant relatives. I fell upon them when I got home from school and read them long into the night. I read about teen girls and boys who attended boarding schools in Boston. I read about girls living in apartment buildings in New York City. They rode subways, walked city blocks, and dined at the automat. I was hungry for knowledge of how others my age lived. I hoarded these bits of information like a raven keeping a cache of shiny objects.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
On Not Being Read To by Busy Parents
As noted in a previous blog post, in 601 we spent some time interviewing each other and taking down literacy histories and sponsorship stories last week. While walking in to campus today, I realized one important factoid that I forgot to share with Tanya while she was interviewing me.
My parents did not read to me when I was growing up. I have no memories (nada) of being read to by my parents when I was a child. I guess I should play the sad soundtrack/wispy violin music to accompany that revelation. When my parents were not working on our family farm or doing things for my siblings and I, they were reading for their own edification and pleasure. I guess it was expected that I'd watch and absorb the value of reading and eventually read on my own. My earliest literacy/reading memories, as I told Tanya, were of my parents reading the newspaper. They read the local paper _The Wenatchee World_ filled with stories about farming and local news, but they also took _The Wall Street Journal_. I remember them avidly passing the paper and discussing it with each other. Later on, we (my siblings and I) read the papers with them.
I had well-worn children's books, but I don't remember my mom reading to me at bed-time, and my Dad was probably "laid out" (as we used to say) on the living room floor after his 12 hour work day. I don't feel particularly bad about the not being read to realization. At the time, I didn't know that parents would read to their kids-I didn't think of it as an option or something I could ask for. I don't remember asking my Mom to read to me or lamenting the fact she didn't. I just remember wanting to learn to read myself.
Interestingly, I spent a lot of time reading to my "dolls" when I was about eight years old. I have several theories about this. One, I didn't know what else to do with those damn dolls, so I made them into "students." Two, I liked the idea of reading to someone (even inert dolls) and sharing books (maybe an attempt to enact the "being read to" exchanges I didn't have with my parents).
When I was in the third and fourth grade, we were read to (chapter books) by our teachers after lunch everyday, and I have great memories of my classmates and I sitting around bawling about the ending of _Where the Redfern Grows_ or clapping after we heard the final lines of_Follow My Leader_, a great story about a young boy recently blinded and his seeing eye dog named "Leader." These "serial installments" were a highlight of our days, and I don't remember anyone really acting out much during those reading sessions.
Yes, I read to my daughter. But I'm noticing she is increasingly impatient with Tom and I reading to her. She grabs the book and wants to "read" the parts she likes. So she is taking over. She is also "spelling" words. Copying down what she sees in books, and I'm not forcing her to use MLA documentation....
My parents did not read to me when I was growing up. I have no memories (nada) of being read to by my parents when I was a child. I guess I should play the sad soundtrack/wispy violin music to accompany that revelation. When my parents were not working on our family farm or doing things for my siblings and I, they were reading for their own edification and pleasure. I guess it was expected that I'd watch and absorb the value of reading and eventually read on my own. My earliest literacy/reading memories, as I told Tanya, were of my parents reading the newspaper. They read the local paper _The Wenatchee World_ filled with stories about farming and local news, but they also took _The Wall Street Journal_. I remember them avidly passing the paper and discussing it with each other. Later on, we (my siblings and I) read the papers with them.
I had well-worn children's books, but I don't remember my mom reading to me at bed-time, and my Dad was probably "laid out" (as we used to say) on the living room floor after his 12 hour work day. I don't feel particularly bad about the not being read to realization. At the time, I didn't know that parents would read to their kids-I didn't think of it as an option or something I could ask for. I don't remember asking my Mom to read to me or lamenting the fact she didn't. I just remember wanting to learn to read myself.
Interestingly, I spent a lot of time reading to my "dolls" when I was about eight years old. I have several theories about this. One, I didn't know what else to do with those damn dolls, so I made them into "students." Two, I liked the idea of reading to someone (even inert dolls) and sharing books (maybe an attempt to enact the "being read to" exchanges I didn't have with my parents).
When I was in the third and fourth grade, we were read to (chapter books) by our teachers after lunch everyday, and I have great memories of my classmates and I sitting around bawling about the ending of _Where the Redfern Grows_ or clapping after we heard the final lines of_Follow My Leader_, a great story about a young boy recently blinded and his seeing eye dog named "Leader." These "serial installments" were a highlight of our days, and I don't remember anyone really acting out much during those reading sessions.
Yes, I read to my daughter. But I'm noticing she is increasingly impatient with Tom and I reading to her. She grabs the book and wants to "read" the parts she likes. So she is taking over. She is also "spelling" words. Copying down what she sees in books, and I'm not forcing her to use MLA documentation....
Monday, November 13, 2006
Linguistic variety
A useful summary/overview of linguists' responses to the Oakland proposal/ebonics, including McWhorter.
http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/LingAnthro1.html
http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/LingAnthro1.html
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Check out Tanya's place
Head on over to Tanya's place at SecuringaSpace so you can see what she has in store for us tomorrow in 601.
She has some engaging questions that will keep us going and posted the CFP for the conference that inspired and solicited the _Rhetoric and Ethnicity_ volume. I've hopped around on the blogs, and I see Laurie is on a roll on her 601 project--she has posted some really useful notes on her Independent Reading and Writing Project. I also see others doing the same. It's exciting to see the reading/writing projects starting to appear on the blogs.
One question I asked on Trish's blog was how "whiteness" is at work in this collection either as a concept or as an identity construction.
I'm also curious about the term ethnic rhetorics in relation to cultural rhetorics? Is ethnic rhetorics a subset of cultural rhetorics? Why not use the term cultural rhetorics instead? Too non-specific?
Robert Danberg has posted some interesting comments in relation to my Smitherman entry. He raises McWhorter's work and his disagreement with Smitherman. Take a look.
A larger question I have is what role does the conference proceedings play in the field vs. an edited collection conceived in a non-conference setting? I'm curious about the different rhetorical situations that each respond to and the different kinds of intellectual projects/processes that result. A number of you commented on the conference paper feel to many of the papers--acknowledging it as a limitation and a genre issue to be mindful of while reading. When I've talked to scholars about things they have published in conference proceedings, I usually hear a bit of an apology--"it was a conference paper" kind of remarks. What is the value of publishing more occasioned writing? How is the intellectual community/interactive feeling of a conference represented in a proceedings (or not)?
She has some engaging questions that will keep us going and posted the CFP for the conference that inspired and solicited the _Rhetoric and Ethnicity_ volume. I've hopped around on the blogs, and I see Laurie is on a roll on her 601 project--she has posted some really useful notes on her Independent Reading and Writing Project. I also see others doing the same. It's exciting to see the reading/writing projects starting to appear on the blogs.
One question I asked on Trish's blog was how "whiteness" is at work in this collection either as a concept or as an identity construction.
I'm also curious about the term ethnic rhetorics in relation to cultural rhetorics? Is ethnic rhetorics a subset of cultural rhetorics? Why not use the term cultural rhetorics instead? Too non-specific?
Robert Danberg has posted some interesting comments in relation to my Smitherman entry. He raises McWhorter's work and his disagreement with Smitherman. Take a look.
A larger question I have is what role does the conference proceedings play in the field vs. an edited collection conceived in a non-conference setting? I'm curious about the different rhetorical situations that each respond to and the different kinds of intellectual projects/processes that result. A number of you commented on the conference paper feel to many of the papers--acknowledging it as a limitation and a genre issue to be mindful of while reading. When I've talked to scholars about things they have published in conference proceedings, I usually hear a bit of an apology--"it was a conference paper" kind of remarks. What is the value of publishing more occasioned writing? How is the intellectual community/interactive feeling of a conference represented in a proceedings (or not)?
Saturday, November 11, 2006
A Rich and Flexible Resource
First off some definitions seem in order. Keith Gilyard in his "Preface" to _Rhetoric and Ethnicity_ defines ethnic rhetoric as language use "inflected with an ethnic difference" (v). He breaks down the definition further to account for "two directions for study":
ETHNIC RHETORIC
1) "attention to ethnic people employing any style of rhetoric, and 2) concern for verbal forms and discursive strategies unique or characteristic of particular ethnic assemblages" (v).
CRITICAL ETHNICITY
Gilyard discusses the debate over the use of race as a terminology. He argues that "given how saturated with conceptions of race our society is, that utilizing the semantic term race is unavoidable if one is truly interested in communicating with large numbers not only to contest racial reasoning but also to contest, in a concrete way, racial hierarchies" (ix). Critical ethnicity is a term Gilyard uses to describe "a search for the elements in various ethnic narratives that have the most political potential in a push for a more humane society, and it represents an impulse to share the fruits of that search with our students" (ix).
The volume that follows this introduction, then, is a enactment of critical ethnicity, addressing essay across two areas: History and identity and Pedagogy. As a conference proceedings from the Penn State Rhetoric conference, the volume gives a multi-faceted glimpse of the possibilities of ethnic rhetorics. Because this volume is a proceeding, though, we often only get a quick glimpse of an argument or a critical framework. I found myself wishing the authors had had more room to expand their thoughts and develop more historical background and analysis.
I found Smitherman's essay to be the most complete and compelling of the ones we read as a class. In "Meditations on Language, Pedagogy, and a Life of Struggle," Smitherman discusses the debates over the Oakland, CA school board's Resolution on Ebonics (issued in December 1996). She discusses the furor and reaction to the proposal while, at the same time, narrating a running history of language politics interwoven with some personal stories. As she points out, the use of "ebonics" was not radical: "They were simply proposing to teach the students and literacy and communication skills in the Language of Wider Communication in the United States, also known as 'standard English'" (5). The idea was to "use the students' home language as a bridge to move them to competence in 'standardized English.'" (5). Woven throughout her analysis are the reactions of prominent public figures who reacted negatively against the proposal. Interestingly, most of the responses seem to believe the school is trying to keep their students from success. Bill Cosby's infamous "Igno-Ebonics" comment...Ebonics in the eyes of these commentators is simly bad English, and the school district is racist for trying to utilized a language pedagogy that acknowledges the validity of students' home languages. In other words, language variety is perceived as a threat. The irony is that later in the article Smitherman shows that the innovative work of linguists and educators has had an effect on everyday people (p.11) when she cites an predominantly African American call-in radio show where the callers prove more informed than the host about language issues.
Ebonics, though, is a "term that has been around since 1973, having emerged during a caucus of Black scholars at a conference convened in St. Louis Missouri, by Dr. Robert Williams" (6). Ebonics, as Smitherman, explains "is not to be subsumed under 'English.' Rather it should be considered a 'parent' language in its own right, with 'descendant' languages in a number of regions around the world" (7). Turner's research on the impact of West African languages on the descendants of slaves in the Sea Island Communities of South Carolina showed a link between African languages and the English the slave descendants who lived there were speaking. These patterns were found more widely beyond the islands, too, a United States Ebonics (USEB).
Given the furor over Ebonics, Smitherman calls for scholarly and pedagogical work that understands "how and when the speaker or writer makes the decision to change the linguistic flow," citing Gilyard's _Voices of the Self_ as groundbreaking in addressing code-switching. She calls for a "systematic study of the language of Black women:" black women preachers, in particular. The biggest change she argues for, however, is that "high school and elementary teachers" need national credentialing standards that involve a course in language diversity. Yes, and college teachers, too.
As I read the article, I thought, too, of the need for a critical public scholarship on language issues--one that goes beyond the usual miss-or-mr. manners approach to language _Eats, Shoots and Leaves_ being a popular example or William Safire's usual pomp and bluster (sometimes he was/is funny). I think Smitherman is right that linguists and educators have had an impact on everyday folks' thinking about language, but when so many notables--Maya Angelou, for one, Jesse Jackson--speak out against ebonics, there is a huge gulf and a general public illiteracy about language issues and language variety.
I remember discussing these issues with my students in 205 course in 1997. I gave them an article about the actual methods being used in the school district, and they were incredulous that the controversy had blown up so much. As one student said, "this is a good teaching technique--common sense, in some ways."
When have people ever been "common sense" about acknowledging the richness of language when it comes to education? Most of us are schooled to think of language as a limitation, a constraint, not as a rich and flexible, multiple resource. I love Brandt's notion of literacy as a resource. I love Smitherman's discussion of language as multi-faceted, flexible, and as an instrument of beauty and expression.
Smitherman's essay was also beautifully written. I loved her line about her dad's old car "smoking" and "catching a flat." Her report of her grandmother's use of language: "If you don't do x or y," I'll beat you from Amazing Grace to Floating Opportunity" or " Genesis to Revelation."
How does our lower and upper-division writing curriculum promote an exploration language diversity? I'm assigned the Politics of Language course next year, so I'm hoping I can do more work in this area.
ETHNIC RHETORIC
1) "attention to ethnic people employing any style of rhetoric, and 2) concern for verbal forms and discursive strategies unique or characteristic of particular ethnic assemblages" (v).
CRITICAL ETHNICITY
Gilyard discusses the debate over the use of race as a terminology. He argues that "given how saturated with conceptions of race our society is, that utilizing the semantic term race is unavoidable if one is truly interested in communicating with large numbers not only to contest racial reasoning but also to contest, in a concrete way, racial hierarchies" (ix). Critical ethnicity is a term Gilyard uses to describe "a search for the elements in various ethnic narratives that have the most political potential in a push for a more humane society, and it represents an impulse to share the fruits of that search with our students" (ix).
The volume that follows this introduction, then, is a enactment of critical ethnicity, addressing essay across two areas: History and identity and Pedagogy. As a conference proceedings from the Penn State Rhetoric conference, the volume gives a multi-faceted glimpse of the possibilities of ethnic rhetorics. Because this volume is a proceeding, though, we often only get a quick glimpse of an argument or a critical framework. I found myself wishing the authors had had more room to expand their thoughts and develop more historical background and analysis.
I found Smitherman's essay to be the most complete and compelling of the ones we read as a class. In "Meditations on Language, Pedagogy, and a Life of Struggle," Smitherman discusses the debates over the Oakland, CA school board's Resolution on Ebonics (issued in December 1996). She discusses the furor and reaction to the proposal while, at the same time, narrating a running history of language politics interwoven with some personal stories. As she points out, the use of "ebonics" was not radical: "They were simply proposing to teach the students and literacy and communication skills in the Language of Wider Communication in the United States, also known as 'standard English'" (5). The idea was to "use the students' home language as a bridge to move them to competence in 'standardized English.'" (5). Woven throughout her analysis are the reactions of prominent public figures who reacted negatively against the proposal. Interestingly, most of the responses seem to believe the school is trying to keep their students from success. Bill Cosby's infamous "Igno-Ebonics" comment...Ebonics in the eyes of these commentators is simly bad English, and the school district is racist for trying to utilized a language pedagogy that acknowledges the validity of students' home languages. In other words, language variety is perceived as a threat. The irony is that later in the article Smitherman shows that the innovative work of linguists and educators has had an effect on everyday people (p.11) when she cites an predominantly African American call-in radio show where the callers prove more informed than the host about language issues.
Ebonics, though, is a "term that has been around since 1973, having emerged during a caucus of Black scholars at a conference convened in St. Louis Missouri, by Dr. Robert Williams" (6). Ebonics, as Smitherman, explains "is not to be subsumed under 'English.' Rather it should be considered a 'parent' language in its own right, with 'descendant' languages in a number of regions around the world" (7). Turner's research on the impact of West African languages on the descendants of slaves in the Sea Island Communities of South Carolina showed a link between African languages and the English the slave descendants who lived there were speaking. These patterns were found more widely beyond the islands, too, a United States Ebonics (USEB).
Given the furor over Ebonics, Smitherman calls for scholarly and pedagogical work that understands "how and when the speaker or writer makes the decision to change the linguistic flow," citing Gilyard's _Voices of the Self_ as groundbreaking in addressing code-switching. She calls for a "systematic study of the language of Black women:" black women preachers, in particular. The biggest change she argues for, however, is that "high school and elementary teachers" need national credentialing standards that involve a course in language diversity. Yes, and college teachers, too.
As I read the article, I thought, too, of the need for a critical public scholarship on language issues--one that goes beyond the usual miss-or-mr. manners approach to language _Eats, Shoots and Leaves_ being a popular example or William Safire's usual pomp and bluster (sometimes he was/is funny). I think Smitherman is right that linguists and educators have had an impact on everyday folks' thinking about language, but when so many notables--Maya Angelou, for one, Jesse Jackson--speak out against ebonics, there is a huge gulf and a general public illiteracy about language issues and language variety.
I remember discussing these issues with my students in 205 course in 1997. I gave them an article about the actual methods being used in the school district, and they were incredulous that the controversy had blown up so much. As one student said, "this is a good teaching technique--common sense, in some ways."
When have people ever been "common sense" about acknowledging the richness of language when it comes to education? Most of us are schooled to think of language as a limitation, a constraint, not as a rich and flexible, multiple resource. I love Brandt's notion of literacy as a resource. I love Smitherman's discussion of language as multi-faceted, flexible, and as an instrument of beauty and expression.
Smitherman's essay was also beautifully written. I loved her line about her dad's old car "smoking" and "catching a flat." Her report of her grandmother's use of language: "If you don't do x or y," I'll beat you from Amazing Grace to Floating Opportunity" or " Genesis to Revelation."
How does our lower and upper-division writing curriculum promote an exploration language diversity? I'm assigned the Politics of Language course next year, so I'm hoping I can do more work in this area.
A State of Recovery
I'm still in a state of recovery from the cold of the year. It has been an awful experience. It started last Saturday and has remained with me, peaking on Wednesday when I was practically comatose in my living room recliner.
Anyway, I think I'm on the mend, but I'll defer my bigger blog entry on the Gilyard and Nunley readings until later this evening.
I do want to give a shout for Terri's blog where she posted her responses to the Deb Brandt questions. The 601 class interviewed each other about their reading and writing experiences and literacy sponsors on Tuesday (we reported out our "findings" to the class as a whole). Terri was out sick, so she posted her responses on the blog, and they echo many of the themes we discussed in class. We saw similar patterns across our literacy experiences as well as some interesting/unique stories and entry points into engaging literacy:
--parents sponsoring our literacies early on (most of us were read to by parents)
--an early interest in books and reading and even an "obsession"--some of us got into trouble for reading too much or going overboard
--interest in writing fairly early on and some early successes, in some cases
There were a lot of interesting factoids, too, about childhood writing and reading experiences:
--Tanya had early writing success--she won a writing contest at age six.
--Immy grew up in an intellectual family--her father was an English professor and her mother also was a writer/thinker.
--Laura was writing letters early on to public officials and reading history voraciously.
--Trish and her sister taught the children in their neighborhood how to read and learn.
--Laurie and her Dad were reading philosophy together and discussing it.
--I thought it would be a good idea at age six to copy down the words of library books I liked so I didn't have to keep checking them out of the library. My mother explained that this was plagiarism, and that it was "illegal." I was crestfallen and feared being arrested (I thought illegal meant you could be arrested immediately), so I stopped.
I'll let everyone post their notes/follow-ups, but it was a productive discussion, and we wished we had more time to take down our literacy histories. We also wished we could find ways to ask our students some of these questions. All of us left the discussion with a healthy respect for all the labor Brandt performed with 80 interviews and data to analyze/interpret. A huge amount of work.
We also discussed aspects of the Feminism and Composition readings, and I went on a historical tour/timeline of feminism that covered the blackboard in the seminar room. I refer to it as the "Central New York as hallowed feminist ground lecture." Trish and Tanya say they have notes about it, so if they would post the timeline at some point.....
More later....
Anyway, I think I'm on the mend, but I'll defer my bigger blog entry on the Gilyard and Nunley readings until later this evening.
I do want to give a shout for Terri's blog where she posted her responses to the Deb Brandt questions. The 601 class interviewed each other about their reading and writing experiences and literacy sponsors on Tuesday (we reported out our "findings" to the class as a whole). Terri was out sick, so she posted her responses on the blog, and they echo many of the themes we discussed in class. We saw similar patterns across our literacy experiences as well as some interesting/unique stories and entry points into engaging literacy:
--parents sponsoring our literacies early on (most of us were read to by parents)
--an early interest in books and reading and even an "obsession"--some of us got into trouble for reading too much or going overboard
--interest in writing fairly early on and some early successes, in some cases
There were a lot of interesting factoids, too, about childhood writing and reading experiences:
--Tanya had early writing success--she won a writing contest at age six.
--Immy grew up in an intellectual family--her father was an English professor and her mother also was a writer/thinker.
--Laura was writing letters early on to public officials and reading history voraciously.
--Trish and her sister taught the children in their neighborhood how to read and learn.
--Laurie and her Dad were reading philosophy together and discussing it.
--I thought it would be a good idea at age six to copy down the words of library books I liked so I didn't have to keep checking them out of the library. My mother explained that this was plagiarism, and that it was "illegal." I was crestfallen and feared being arrested (I thought illegal meant you could be arrested immediately), so I stopped.
I'll let everyone post their notes/follow-ups, but it was a productive discussion, and we wished we had more time to take down our literacy histories. We also wished we could find ways to ask our students some of these questions. All of us left the discussion with a healthy respect for all the labor Brandt performed with 80 interviews and data to analyze/interpret. A huge amount of work.
We also discussed aspects of the Feminism and Composition readings, and I went on a historical tour/timeline of feminism that covered the blackboard in the seminar room. I refer to it as the "Central New York as hallowed feminist ground lecture." Trish and Tanya say they have notes about it, so if they would post the timeline at some point.....
More later....
Monday, November 06, 2006
Locational Feminism
I'm falling over fatigued and plagued with a head cold (no doubt I'm constructing myself in heroic terms here), but I just had to get to the keyboard to type in this quotation from Susan Stanford Friedman, which I really like:
"A locational feminism feminism is one that acknowledges the historically and geographically specific forms in which feminism emerges, takes root, changes, travels, translates, and transplants in different spacio/temporal contexts"(2).
I like this because it puts feminism in motion, into time and space rather than fixing a definition.
I also like the way she describes later in the article a way to account for the differences and commonalities between feminism as manifest in India in a specific example where women mandate "a quota of representation by lower caste women in the village councils of rural India" and the feminists who "demonstrate for reproductive choice outside a beleaguered abortion clinic in the United States." As Freidman puts it " both are political practices informed by theories of gender and social justice that are recognizably a part of a singular entity that we call 'feminism."
I really like the work Friedman is doing here to account for differences within feminisms in a way that does not dismiss or undercut different manifestations of feminisms.
I have more to say here about the geographically specific forms of feminisms she is addressing, but given the temporality of this response I'll make it brief. The articles this week make mention of "foremothers" in feminist composition studies. But I'd like to remind us of that we walk on grounds where our foremothers/fathers are not women in composition, but the early suffragists (Anthony, Stanton, Gage Truth, among others), the activists for abolition of slavery (Truth, Douglass, Tubman, May) the Haudosaunee elders among others who inspired the Iroquois Federation upon which our foundational (not anti-foundational) democracy is based This region is rich rhetorical ground, yet I think that is often forgotten. I'd like to think that cultural rhetoric would situate us in those discourses and that we'd be urged to steep ourselves in our social, historical, political and geographic location right here in Central New York and Syracuse, which, by the way, is part of the Onondaga Nation land claim.
g'night.
"A locational feminism feminism is one that acknowledges the historically and geographically specific forms in which feminism emerges, takes root, changes, travels, translates, and transplants in different spacio/temporal contexts"(2).
I like this because it puts feminism in motion, into time and space rather than fixing a definition.
I also like the way she describes later in the article a way to account for the differences and commonalities between feminism as manifest in India in a specific example where women mandate "a quota of representation by lower caste women in the village councils of rural India" and the feminists who "demonstrate for reproductive choice outside a beleaguered abortion clinic in the United States." As Freidman puts it " both are political practices informed by theories of gender and social justice that are recognizably a part of a singular entity that we call 'feminism."
I really like the work Friedman is doing here to account for differences within feminisms in a way that does not dismiss or undercut different manifestations of feminisms.
I have more to say here about the geographically specific forms of feminisms she is addressing, but given the temporality of this response I'll make it brief. The articles this week make mention of "foremothers" in feminist composition studies. But I'd like to remind us of that we walk on grounds where our foremothers/fathers are not women in composition, but the early suffragists (Anthony, Stanton, Gage Truth, among others), the activists for abolition of slavery (Truth, Douglass, Tubman, May) the Haudosaunee elders among others who inspired the Iroquois Federation upon which our foundational (not anti-foundational) democracy is based This region is rich rhetorical ground, yet I think that is often forgotten. I'd like to think that cultural rhetoric would situate us in those discourses and that we'd be urged to steep ourselves in our social, historical, political and geographic location right here in Central New York and Syracuse, which, by the way, is part of the Onondaga Nation land claim.
g'night.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
5 Textual Things
OK, I've been tagged more than once by those engaging in the "5 things" exercise. Here's my adaptation. I told Tom about this exercise last night, and he told me 5 "unrepeatable" things about himself, most of which I didn't know, so that was funny. Anyway:
5 "semi-textual" things you may or may not know:
1) The novel _Winter Wheat_ by Mildred Walker is my favorite novel. A friend gave it to me about eight years ago, and I've read it many times. I identify with the rural isolation and struggle portrayed in the novel.
2) I love the poem "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy. Not a big revelation. It is on my office door.
3) I read _Jane Eyre_ every night I was in graduate school to escape from the theory I was reading and to put myself to sleep (sort of a novelistic Sominex). As soon as I graduated, I put away the novel. Sheer escapism, I guess, or maybe the fact that the Brontes were a carry-over from my master's program (My thesis was on Emily Bronte).
4) I like to read about WWII aviation. My brother got me into it when I was around ten and we memorized every German warplane in the Luftwaffe and every American counterpart. I can't identify most of them anymore.
5 plus). I once edited the memoir of a WWII bomber pilot ( Col. Jack Swayze) who flew many missions over Germany in a
B-24, affectionately know by the pilots as the "Crate." I keep running into WWII aviators in various walks of life because I regularly hang out with people over the age of eighty. I currently am running into WWII Prisoners of War (POWs). In the last few months, I have met two WWII POWs (one just last week who was in the infantry and spent 5 months in a stalag).
Given my preoccupation with war, it is perhaps an irony that I became active in the peace movement.
5 "semi-textual" things you may or may not know:
1) The novel _Winter Wheat_ by Mildred Walker is my favorite novel. A friend gave it to me about eight years ago, and I've read it many times. I identify with the rural isolation and struggle portrayed in the novel.
2) I love the poem "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy. Not a big revelation. It is on my office door.
3) I read _Jane Eyre_ every night I was in graduate school to escape from the theory I was reading and to put myself to sleep (sort of a novelistic Sominex). As soon as I graduated, I put away the novel. Sheer escapism, I guess, or maybe the fact that the Brontes were a carry-over from my master's program (My thesis was on Emily Bronte).
4) I like to read about WWII aviation. My brother got me into it when I was around ten and we memorized every German warplane in the Luftwaffe and every American counterpart. I can't identify most of them anymore.
5 plus). I once edited the memoir of a WWII bomber pilot ( Col. Jack Swayze) who flew many missions over Germany in a
B-24, affectionately know by the pilots as the "Crate." I keep running into WWII aviators in various walks of life because I regularly hang out with people over the age of eighty. I currently am running into WWII Prisoners of War (POWs). In the last few months, I have met two WWII POWs (one just last week who was in the infantry and spent 5 months in a stalag).
Given my preoccupation with war, it is perhaps an irony that I became active in the peace movement.
Where art thou, feminism and composition studies?
Rereading these articles on feminism and composition studies has sent me into a reverie of considering where feminism and composition studies has gone and where it is going. I started graduate school in 1989, one year after Elizabeth Flynn published her landmark article. Don't worry, though, I won't launch into a nostalgic narrative about the "good ole days" of feminist composition studies. Instead, I'm going to be asking Kelly Concannon to hop around on our blogs to comment this week (if she's willing--Kelly C., are you out there)? Kelly recently took a major exam in Feminism and Composition Studies, and one question that Margaret and I asked her to consider is where feminist composition studies has gone since the flurry of work in the late eighties and throughout the nineties. One hypothesis is that we noticed a drop-off in citations after the late nineties in feminism and composition studies and an upturn in work in feminist rhetorical studies due to the work of recovering and regendering the rhetorical canon. There is still work being produced in feminist composition studies, but much of it is being channeled toward rhetorical studies. I hope Kelly C. will jump in and comment and that others might offer other hypotheses.
I think Boardman and Ritchie offer us a strong analysis of how feminism in composition studies was present before Flynn's article in 1988. As they point out, feminism and composition
"cannot be constructed in a tidy narrative" (589). They both worry that Flynn's article is represented as the start when there is actually a more complex, embedded history. They argue that there are "three overlapping tropes that shed light on the roles feminism has played in composition and in the strategies women have used to gain a place in its conversations:
1) INCLUSION Following the the pattern of developing feminist thought in the 1970s and 1980s, many early feminist accoutns in composition sought inclusion and equality for women" (589).
There is a discussion of Florence Howe, Adrienne Rich, Pamela Annas and others who wrote from the vantage point of English depts where they taught women's literature and also writing courses. Ritchie and Boardman note that the point here is toaddress "What difference might it make if the student (or teacher) is female" (595). Flynn's article appears to fit into this genre.
2) INTUITIVE CONNECTION "More recent accounts like those of Louise Phelps and Janet Emig posit feminism as a "subterreanean' unpoken presence (xv), and Susan Jarratt and Laura Brady suggest the metonymy or contiguity of feminism and composition" (589). The idea here is that there is a metonymic relationship between feminism and composition. They cite Caywood and Overing's book _Teaching Writing: Gender, Pedagogy, and Equity_, "one of the first books to connect writing and feminism in composition" 595). They point to the "parallel lives of composition and feminist theory" (595).
Kelly has a good reading of this in her exam, so I hope she will discuss it.
3. FEMINIST DISRUPTIONS "Also developing during this time has been what feminist postmodernists define as disruption and critique of hegemonic narratives--resistance, interruption, and finally redirection of composition's business as usual" (589).
The idea here is that a new form of feminism (theorized or experienced) is addressed and/or past readings/relationships are reconfigured. A disruption that needs to be accounted for here in 1999 is how feminists in composition studies addressing race and ethnicity are "disrupting" narratives of feminism that presume whiteness, e.g., Malea Powell, Shirley Logan, Jacqueline Jones Royster. The authors acknowledge in the conclusion that "we have not thoroughly come to terms with students' or teachers' gendered, classed, raced position in the academy--or the continuing failure to provide a viaable education for many minority students or encouragement for minority colleagues in our field" (605).
What I have wondered on rereading this tropological formulation, though, is what politics and theories of feminisms drive these various tropes? I wonder what reading these individual theorists in light of traditions and theorizations of feminisms would reveal? For instance, It's important for us to read Rich's work within a tradition of lesbian feminism, but her work doesn't get read that way here, necessarily. The tropes do not necessarily capture the specific locations of each feminists' work and the evolution of their work over time. I worry we read only part of Rich's work "When We Dead Awaken" and "Taking Women Students Seriously" without accounting for the other parts of her work. Also, how do we read a figure like Florence Howe in relation to her contributions to feminist literary criticism and to the founding of women's studies? We have only part of Howe here? The part that pertains to composition studies with a brief glimpse into other aspects of her career and thinking.
I think it was interesting that Ritchie and Boardman pointed to the preponderance of inclusion and intuitive analysis of feminism in Faigley and Berlin's work and the lack of a mention of feminism and gender in Harris's work. They point to the fact that the first edition of _Cross-talk_ included one article: Flynn's. The second version, of course, has added a few more. This led me to wonder to what extent graduate education in Rhetoric and Composition encourages a historical and political analysis of feminism and feminist discourses/theories? Does feminist studies get relegated to the one or two articles in the introductory reading or into the individual course on feminist rhetorics or feminist composition studies--a feminist course that people can elect into or elect out of? I have to ask the same question of work in race and ethnicity in Rhetoric and Composition studies and of questions of sexuality and disability studies? How have these discourses, theories, and social and political movements made it into Rhetoric and Composition studies' introductory graduate courses or not? How much does this work truly get represented in the mainstream of composition studies?
I think a lack of education in feminist theory and feminist history is a lack of education in history, politics, theory, language, material conditions. I don't think it is about being a feminist or not being a feminist, although I think that there is a tendency to read feminism that way. I think we've all heard it before: " I'm not a feminist, so I don't need to know much--if anything--about feminist theory or history or politics. I don't need to read in those areas. Or feminism is over with, we're all equal, so what's the point." Or perhaps the more subconscious: "Feminism is a threat to me or to those I love or feel allied to--feminism is dangerous somehow." After all, we have plenty of discourse out there that is hateful to feminisms and to women. I open up the paper (_Post-Standard_) today to read about a local woman Wendy Dirk who was murdered by her husband after she left him (he killed himself afterward). This is one of four domestic abuse homicides in the county this year. The story takes up three pages describing Wendy's life and information about Vera House, the local domestic violence shelter is listed. The story (and there are more like this one every week) is a reminder of the lack of equity, inclusion, and the real threat of violence. This is one of the daily backdrops of living in this culture....as I blog about feminism, I am simultanenously reading a story about domestic violence.
I think that graduate education in Rhetoric and Composition studies has to address the history of the field through a feminist lens in order to account for the position of its practitioners, for one, and partly for its marginalized status. Earlier in the course, we read Milller and Holbrook and Connors, all of whom are addressing questions of gender and status. We read Royster and Williams who point out that the histories of the field have ignored race and ethnicity. But I think that seeing feminism as necessary only for a reading of the status and marginalization of the field is a mistaken move. I think those studies (Miller, Holbrook, Connors) have to be read, too, against the histories of feminist movements in the 19th/early and mid-20th century, the real struggles feminists were engaged in for access to the right to elective franchise and entrance into the professions, education, reform of divorce and employment laws, property rights, and other areas. A number of these struggles are still ongoing here in the U.S. and across the globe. Let's not forget it or suppress it or pretend otherwise!
I think Boardman and Ritchie offer us a strong analysis of how feminism in composition studies was present before Flynn's article in 1988. As they point out, feminism and composition
"cannot be constructed in a tidy narrative" (589). They both worry that Flynn's article is represented as the start when there is actually a more complex, embedded history. They argue that there are "three overlapping tropes that shed light on the roles feminism has played in composition and in the strategies women have used to gain a place in its conversations:
1) INCLUSION Following the the pattern of developing feminist thought in the 1970s and 1980s, many early feminist accoutns in composition sought inclusion and equality for women" (589).
There is a discussion of Florence Howe, Adrienne Rich, Pamela Annas and others who wrote from the vantage point of English depts where they taught women's literature and also writing courses. Ritchie and Boardman note that the point here is toaddress "What difference might it make if the student (or teacher) is female" (595). Flynn's article appears to fit into this genre.
2) INTUITIVE CONNECTION "More recent accounts like those of Louise Phelps and Janet Emig posit feminism as a "subterreanean' unpoken presence (xv), and Susan Jarratt and Laura Brady suggest the metonymy or contiguity of feminism and composition" (589). The idea here is that there is a metonymic relationship between feminism and composition. They cite Caywood and Overing's book _Teaching Writing: Gender, Pedagogy, and Equity_, "one of the first books to connect writing and feminism in composition" 595). They point to the "parallel lives of composition and feminist theory" (595).
Kelly has a good reading of this in her exam, so I hope she will discuss it.
3. FEMINIST DISRUPTIONS "Also developing during this time has been what feminist postmodernists define as disruption and critique of hegemonic narratives--resistance, interruption, and finally redirection of composition's business as usual" (589).
The idea here is that a new form of feminism (theorized or experienced) is addressed and/or past readings/relationships are reconfigured. A disruption that needs to be accounted for here in 1999 is how feminists in composition studies addressing race and ethnicity are "disrupting" narratives of feminism that presume whiteness, e.g., Malea Powell, Shirley Logan, Jacqueline Jones Royster. The authors acknowledge in the conclusion that "we have not thoroughly come to terms with students' or teachers' gendered, classed, raced position in the academy--or the continuing failure to provide a viaable education for many minority students or encouragement for minority colleagues in our field" (605).
What I have wondered on rereading this tropological formulation, though, is what politics and theories of feminisms drive these various tropes? I wonder what reading these individual theorists in light of traditions and theorizations of feminisms would reveal? For instance, It's important for us to read Rich's work within a tradition of lesbian feminism, but her work doesn't get read that way here, necessarily. The tropes do not necessarily capture the specific locations of each feminists' work and the evolution of their work over time. I worry we read only part of Rich's work "When We Dead Awaken" and "Taking Women Students Seriously" without accounting for the other parts of her work. Also, how do we read a figure like Florence Howe in relation to her contributions to feminist literary criticism and to the founding of women's studies? We have only part of Howe here? The part that pertains to composition studies with a brief glimpse into other aspects of her career and thinking.
I think it was interesting that Ritchie and Boardman pointed to the preponderance of inclusion and intuitive analysis of feminism in Faigley and Berlin's work and the lack of a mention of feminism and gender in Harris's work. They point to the fact that the first edition of _Cross-talk_ included one article: Flynn's. The second version, of course, has added a few more. This led me to wonder to what extent graduate education in Rhetoric and Composition encourages a historical and political analysis of feminism and feminist discourses/theories? Does feminist studies get relegated to the one or two articles in the introductory reading or into the individual course on feminist rhetorics or feminist composition studies--a feminist course that people can elect into or elect out of? I have to ask the same question of work in race and ethnicity in Rhetoric and Composition studies and of questions of sexuality and disability studies? How have these discourses, theories, and social and political movements made it into Rhetoric and Composition studies' introductory graduate courses or not? How much does this work truly get represented in the mainstream of composition studies?
I think a lack of education in feminist theory and feminist history is a lack of education in history, politics, theory, language, material conditions. I don't think it is about being a feminist or not being a feminist, although I think that there is a tendency to read feminism that way. I think we've all heard it before: " I'm not a feminist, so I don't need to know much--if anything--about feminist theory or history or politics. I don't need to read in those areas. Or feminism is over with, we're all equal, so what's the point." Or perhaps the more subconscious: "Feminism is a threat to me or to those I love or feel allied to--feminism is dangerous somehow." After all, we have plenty of discourse out there that is hateful to feminisms and to women. I open up the paper (_Post-Standard_) today to read about a local woman Wendy Dirk who was murdered by her husband after she left him (he killed himself afterward). This is one of four domestic abuse homicides in the county this year. The story takes up three pages describing Wendy's life and information about Vera House, the local domestic violence shelter is listed. The story (and there are more like this one every week) is a reminder of the lack of equity, inclusion, and the real threat of violence. This is one of the daily backdrops of living in this culture....as I blog about feminism, I am simultanenously reading a story about domestic violence.
I think that graduate education in Rhetoric and Composition studies has to address the history of the field through a feminist lens in order to account for the position of its practitioners, for one, and partly for its marginalized status. Earlier in the course, we read Milller and Holbrook and Connors, all of whom are addressing questions of gender and status. We read Royster and Williams who point out that the histories of the field have ignored race and ethnicity. But I think that seeing feminism as necessary only for a reading of the status and marginalization of the field is a mistaken move. I think those studies (Miller, Holbrook, Connors) have to be read, too, against the histories of feminist movements in the 19th/early and mid-20th century, the real struggles feminists were engaged in for access to the right to elective franchise and entrance into the professions, education, reform of divorce and employment laws, property rights, and other areas. A number of these struggles are still ongoing here in the U.S. and across the globe. Let's not forget it or suppress it or pretend otherwise!
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Once upon a time there was a prison
Here's another story written by Autumn. It is about Steve Champion (Adisa) who writes with my partner Tom Kerr.
"Once upon a time there was a prison. It was downtown. It was a male prison. It was called death row. Steve lived in the prison. He had a big flower bush in the prison yard. The yard had a razor fence."
If you want to get to know Adisa and his work, see the following:
Textual files and Adisa's address. He appreciates getting mail.
http://www.ccadp.org/stevechampion.htm
Sample pieces of Adisa's work/writing in audio files at Tom's website.
http://faculty.ithaca.edu/tkerr/adisa/
"Once upon a time there was a prison. It was downtown. It was a male prison. It was called death row. Steve lived in the prison. He had a big flower bush in the prison yard. The yard had a razor fence."
If you want to get to know Adisa and his work, see the following:
Textual files and Adisa's address. He appreciates getting mail.
http://www.ccadp.org/stevechampion.htm
Sample pieces of Adisa's work/writing in audio files at Tom's website.
http://faculty.ithaca.edu/tkerr/adisa/
Thursday, November 02, 2006
The literacy/transcription of a four-year old: Autumn's poetry and writing
I often transcribe Autumn's words. If you don't know who Autumn is, she is my four year old daughter (going on five).
Here are some poems she wrote this summer (that she dictated to me). I also include some of her other writings. Reading Deb Brandt's book _Literacy in American Lives_ made me think of how Autumn is engaging writing. Often she comes to me and to Tom and demands we transcribe her words. At her preschool, transcription is a regular activity. They make "books" frequently. Her five journals are full of her name and my name and Tom's name and scribbles that look like cursive writing.
Anyway, here it are some writings (and I do have Autumn's permission to post them here). I'm sure she'll have her own blog soon enough.
Autumn’s sweet honey day
#1:
Fish are pretty
The sky is blue
The clouds are white
What a beautiful day today
#2:
The firebell rings
They put their things on
They get in and out
They get everywhere in and out
#3:
Rocks are pretty, shiny ones
Sky is pretty
The ground is green
#4
I love beautiful things
They are beautiful
#5
I love tie-die
I love the wind blowing on my head
The bed is comfortable
The shower is fun
Everything is comfortable
Everything is fun
Everything is pretty
Everythuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuing is fun
Frost it up with ice-cream
#6
People are fun.
And beautiful pretty flowers
The day is pretty
My heart glows inside
I love to play
I love to do things you do
#7
I love my Mommy
I love my Daddy
I really love them because they are so beautiful
I love them as big as space
Flowers are pretty
They are nice and beautiful
And pretty autumn
…………………………………………………
Autie’s Storybook This was composed last Christmas (’05) when a neighbor was over for dinner. Tina, my neighbor, and I agree that we love the image of the "blue shadow" shop. Tom, however, isn't sure that he likes being designated the "Christmas" slob.
There were snowflakes snowing. Momma came out and built a snowman with Autumn and Dad. Tina was out there building another snowman. Her snowman was different than ours.
Momma had her pretty, glittery scarf on. It had Christmas trees on it and glitter.
Momma said “Let’s go to the blue shadow shop.”
The eye-shadow had Christmas tree ornaments on it.
Then Mr. Dad-da came and sieudik…kkkkiututuyititrotytrewdfghhjjjjjjjjkooppp]iouyiyiyyiouytuiyoyyiuptouuoytityituiuyaid: “autie, we have to go out to the beauty shop.”
And then the Christmas slob came. It was Tom.
The Christmas slob was woo-woo’s house. Vcxrrr7rtrr5r76t76784e6tr8990680696769777tyioopiyyuiioinxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffrtyuiooooooooooooooo[]]]]]\yyyyyuiiiiop[[[\\\\\\\\\\],…..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,…………………………………………………..AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Autumnrwwrwrwewett67e7r737873
This next gem was composed this very evening. It is short, but dynamic. Thank god Barbie put the high heels in her purse. She can't walk fast unless she does.
Mermaidia
Barbie has a strapless dress with some little pink earrings and a tiara. She had some high heels in her purse. And she was wearing a purple diamond ring. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhh hh eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee[[[[[dmnjhwiuweiuyehwiqyeuEKwjkruqiyuuyweuthfdghagshshgfgh
If you would like to view Barbie (above), go to Susan Adam's blog Tales of a Ninth Grade Tuba Player where you can see pictures of Autumn holding up Barbie so she can avoid being attacked by pirates (Susan and Anita) at Laurie Gries' Halloween party.
Here are some poems she wrote this summer (that she dictated to me). I also include some of her other writings. Reading Deb Brandt's book _Literacy in American Lives_ made me think of how Autumn is engaging writing. Often she comes to me and to Tom and demands we transcribe her words. At her preschool, transcription is a regular activity. They make "books" frequently. Her five journals are full of her name and my name and Tom's name and scribbles that look like cursive writing.
Anyway, here it are some writings (and I do have Autumn's permission to post them here). I'm sure she'll have her own blog soon enough.
Autumn’s sweet honey day
#1:
Fish are pretty
The sky is blue
The clouds are white
What a beautiful day today
#2:
The firebell rings
They put their things on
They get in and out
They get everywhere in and out
#3:
Rocks are pretty, shiny ones
Sky is pretty
The ground is green
#4
I love beautiful things
They are beautiful
#5
I love tie-die
I love the wind blowing on my head
The bed is comfortable
The shower is fun
Everything is comfortable
Everything is fun
Everything is pretty
Everythuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuing is fun
Frost it up with ice-cream
#6
People are fun.
And beautiful pretty flowers
The day is pretty
My heart glows inside
I love to play
I love to do things you do
#7
I love my Mommy
I love my Daddy
I really love them because they are so beautiful
I love them as big as space
Flowers are pretty
They are nice and beautiful
And pretty autumn
…………………………………………………
Autie’s Storybook This was composed last Christmas (’05) when a neighbor was over for dinner. Tina, my neighbor, and I agree that we love the image of the "blue shadow" shop. Tom, however, isn't sure that he likes being designated the "Christmas" slob.
There were snowflakes snowing. Momma came out and built a snowman with Autumn and Dad. Tina was out there building another snowman. Her snowman was different than ours.
Momma had her pretty, glittery scarf on. It had Christmas trees on it and glitter.
Momma said “Let’s go to the blue shadow shop.”
The eye-shadow had Christmas tree ornaments on it.
Then Mr. Dad-da came and sieudik…kkkkiututuyititrotytrewdfghhjjjjjjjjkooppp]iouyiyiyyiouytuiyoyyiuptouuoytityituiuyaid: “autie, we have to go out to the beauty shop.”
And then the Christmas slob came. It was Tom.
The Christmas slob was woo-woo’s house. Vcxrrr7rtrr5r76t76784e6tr8990680696769777tyioopiyyuiioinxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffrtyuiooooooooooooooo[]]]]]\yyyyyuiiiiop[[[\\\\\\\\\\],…..,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,…………………………………………………..AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Autumnrwwrwrwewett67e7r737873
This next gem was composed this very evening. It is short, but dynamic. Thank god Barbie put the high heels in her purse. She can't walk fast unless she does.
Mermaidia
Barbie has a strapless dress with some little pink earrings and a tiara. She had some high heels in her purse. And she was wearing a purple diamond ring. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhh hh eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee[[[[[dmnjhwiuweiuyehwiqyeuEKwjkruqiyuuyweuthfdghagshshgfgh
If you would like to view Barbie (above), go to Susan Adam's blog Tales of a Ninth Grade Tuba Player where you can see pictures of Autumn holding up Barbie so she can avoid being attacked by pirates (Susan and Anita) at Laurie Gries' Halloween party.
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