Council of Writing Program Administrators

Detroit Lions training camp begins today, and the title above--word has it--is the banner material leading their 2008-2009 charge toward the NFC playoffs. 

Oh, no playoffs, you say? In that case, "Do you believe in now?" will be their slogan as they surge to a week eight "pundit's mention" of a slim possibility that they will make the post-season. Right: like last year.

Sean Yuille of Pride of Detroit puts it this way:

Believe in now? I'm clinging to the response, "yes until no," which means that I, for one, believe in now about the same as I believed in any Lions' season since I was old enough to have beliefs (I can't pinpoint the date, but the very possibility of belief in the Lions' chances must've come about during the Chuck Long era).

Now? Not a whole lot more than then. Yet, sadly, I will persist in my Lions fandom, so, 'yes' for the duration of training camp at the very least.

More riffing on Kopelson's CCC article. She notes from her study that "graduate student responses seem to suggest that it is what Janice Lauer has called the 'spaciousness of rhetoric' that can provide an ideal designation for all of what we (could) do, an appellation around which an array of disciplinary inquires and pursuits might best coalesce, and not because it best contains those inquires, but because it permits them to disseminate and disperse. As Brenda [one of the grad students] asked earlier, 'what's not rhetoric?'" Kopelson endorses this familiar notion of thinking of rhetoric as a broadly conceived field and encourages the idea of exploring the many possible spaces out there, as opposed to our continuing penchant for self examination. She writes that she is not arguing that self-exmaination "is an unimportant activity, but only that the costs of are indeed high when self-scrutiny comes at the expense of taking up other critical concerns and of making other, more innovative and far-reaching forms of knowledge."

I am intrigued by this notion of "far-reaching" and will come back to that in a moment. But first let me say that I get the whole resistance to the insistence that rhet/comp research be pedagogical and/or applicable to the classroom. I understand the desire to be recognized as a discipline and valued by other sectors of the university. I get all that. I also recognize the arguments made by folks like Kurt Spellmeyer that we need to make ourselves relevant to the culture and not become increasingly esoteric and irrelevant like some of the other humanities. We don't need to go in that direction.

But I also see the following. FYC is a big business. 3000 4-year institutions, 2500 2-year institutions in the U.S. I figure there could be as many as 100,000 people teaching FYC in the fall (tenure-line, lecturers, grad students, adjuncts, etc.). I don't know. That would be an average of a little under 20 faculty per institution. Maybe it's 75,000. It's a lot of people.

According to Ellen Cushman in her piece in Composition Studies in the New Millenium, there were 135 Phd's in rhet/comp granted in 1997. For my informal purpose, let's assume that is a good average for the last 20 years. That would be 2700 Phds. Given that number, I think it's safe to assume there are fewer than 4000 rhet/comp Phd's currently teaching in higher education.

Of course not all of those folks teach rhet/comp (in fact only a fraction do). But let's lump everyone together for a moment and say that rhet/comp PhD's make up about 5% of the people teaching writing and/or rhetoric in higher education.

So if we want to be "far-reaching," perhaps we could start by reaching the 70,000 other people teaching writing in colleges. Do we really imagine these people are already hearing us? I assure you, they are not. If we don't have anything to say to that audience, who do we have something to say to? It should be that hard to reach these audiences. Rhet/comp Phds supervise most FYC programs.

I'm not saying we all need to do that work, but there's plenty of work to be done right there.

There's another important aspect of this however that makes our self-scrutiny more understandable. We are in the midst of the biggest communications revolution in human history. Needless to say that revolution is part of the larger transformations of globalization. And (needless to say) these processes are transforming higher education. Our discipline might have a role to play there.

But let me take a different tack for a second. What are the fundamental, paradigmatic questions of rhetoric and composition?

• What is communication? It's a cross-disciplinary question--comm studies, psychology, information science, linguistics, cognitive science, sociology... However, rhetoric certainly has a role to play as the (post) humanistic investigation of these matters.
• What is effective communication? This becomes more an "applied science." This is where we might connect with a broader audience.
• How do we teach/learn effective communication? The pedagogical turn. Here we also have a potentially broad audience in the education industry.

The communications revolution has effected a paradigmatic shift in that first question, which then trickles down to everything else. I realize the danger in these conversations is always to end up saying we should all do what I'm doing. I don't want to argue that! I'm not sure I want the competition. I realize maybe 5-10% of scholars in rhet/comp deal with technology as a central concern in their work. That's fine, as long as every rhet/comp prof under the age of 45 realizes that technological change will likely fundamentally transform the institution and culture in which s/he works in the next 20 years.

I'm just saying that if our discipline is looking for a stronger sense of identity it could do worse than to identify a few core questions, conduct research, and then bring that work to bear beyond our community in conversations where decisions are being made.

Spurred on by my own recent acquisition of an iphone, I've created a mobile version of Digital Digs (digitaldigs.mofuse.mobi) Now I just have to figure out how to detect devices and redirect folks there. There are a number of javascript options, but I don't have time right now to play with all that.

Kopelson writes,

This appears in the final section of the essay, the part titled "Conclusion: Banishing Echo and Narcissus." Here, Kopelson takes exception with the field's self-reflexivity, the growing heap of self-interested and self-absorbed assessments of where we are or where we are heading. There is an unidentified villain here, and I wondered as I read whether Kopelson has any favorite 'misses', accounts that get it terribly wrong or that are built up on marsh-lands of mushy data.

Reading this section and the quotation above in particular, I didn't get the sense that Kopelson wasn't so much interested in "banishing" Echo and Narcissus as in giving them overhauls, in renewing them, even in teaching them how to resonate and reflect less recklessly. In other words, what is wrong with many self-reflexive disciplinary accounts (or "discipliniographies" to lift and bend a term Maureen Daly Goggin introduces in Authoring a Discipline) is that they succumb to a localist impulse. That is, they un-self-conciously extrapolate from local experience and anecdotal evidence onto the field at large, projecting some local knowledge onto the expansive abstraction that is the discipline (however we imagine it to be). The localist impulse can take many different shapes; often it is akin to reading patterns through the course of an individual career (i.e., "in my thirty years at Whatsittoyou U.") or by cherry-picking from an exceedingly thin selection of data (titles of conference presentations or tables of contents for teacher training manuals). We all do this to some extent--making sense of the field at large through our local, immediate experiences, but it is dangerous to arrive at conclusions about the field (or world) at-large solely by examining one's own neighborhood.

What I'm getting at is that I don't have any beef with the disciplinary practice of self-examination. Perhaps there are more than a handful of fields in the academy that would benefit from more of it. I hold history (the calling of others who've navigated this canyon) and reflection in high regard (perhaps not to the ill-fated extremes of Echo and Narcissus). Resonanceresonanceresonance and reflection are valuable, especially for newcomers, for the "new converts" Kopelson mentions. But they will not be successful--or very useful--until they get beyond that localist impulse, until they involve earnest field-wide data collections and collaboratively built databases. I don't know how well this matches with Kopelson's "innovative and far-reaching forms of knowledge," but it is increasingly where my own interests lie. If those far-reaching forms of knowledge included disciplinary data (even simple stuff, like how many programs offer undergraduate writing majors), they could generate insights about disciplinarity. In the meantime those full-view insights will continue to elude us as long as we leap from local knowledge to widespread pattern, without addressing sufficiently the intermediary scales.

Kopelson, Karen. "Sp(l)itting Images; or, Back to the Future of (Rhetoric and?) Composition." CCC 59.4 (2008): 750-780. [Carnival]

Following on Derek's call for a carnival discussion of "Sp(l)itting Images; or, Back to the Future of (Rhetoric and?) Composition" by Karen Kopelson in the latest CCC. The article extends the conversation over the pressures in the field to bend research toward pedagogic applications, particularly in relation to dissertation projects.

I haven't had an opportunity to read everyone else's responses, so apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, but there is clearly a job market imperative here. Clancy mentioned her journey toward rhet/comp. My journey was quite pragmatic. I had an MA in creative writing, a strong interest in postmodern theory, and was in an experimental PhD program at Albany. One day I thought to myself, "hmmm... I think if I want to get a job, I'd greatly improve my chances if I did a rhet/comp dissertation." In the end I don't think I did. I don't think anyone on my cmte knew what I rhet/com diss would look like. But I did talk about writing and pedagogy and I did claim to be in rhet/comp. And so far it seems to be working ok. In truth, the thing that ended up making me competitive on the market was my facility with technology, and that remains the case to date.

The point I want to make though is a little different, but related in that it is about job market imperatives. There are something like 3000 four-year institutions in the US? How many of them really give a damn what your research is? 10%? I consider Cortland a very average institution in this regard: a comprehensive, masters-granting, public college. Yes, you have to publish to get tenure. You probably need to publish at least one article in a peer-reviewed journal. And after tenure... well, you know. If I had decided to pursue creative nonfiction and write essays, I could have done that. I hardly think Cortland is alone in this regard.

Including that pedagogic turn in a dissertation may indeed be a response to the importance placed in rhet/comp research on pedagogic application, but it is also a pragmatic, job-market strategy in a field where, quite honestly, the people hiring you are concerned with you as a teacher first and researcher second (or even third, following their estimation of you as a potential colleague). At a Phd-granting institution the kind of research you do would make a difference, and your success as a researcher could have an impact on the program as a whole. But that's just not really the case elsewhere.

More on this later.

Call for Papers
Service-learning in the Composition Classroom

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A passing tribute to having wrapped up Dan Roam's The Back of the Napkin last night, I figured why not throw down a few images in the spirit of keeping things carnivalesque. Roam is a marker-carrying whiteboarder whose core premise is that we spark insights into complex problems by treating them to a simplified and illustrated version. I doubt that I have played strictly by the heuristics he introduces in the book; nevertheless, I do find some of the stark oversimplifications in these first four images helpful for thinking through some of what Kopelson sets up in the article.

I've been really behind the eight-ball past couple weeks and I missed this article by Vance Fried in Inside HigherEd. Essentially he is suggesting an entrepreneurial model for developing high-quality low-cost 4-year degrees for cost-conscious students attending moderately selective institutions. The basics of the model are a compression of the curriculum and major offerings, increasing class size, and not asking faculty to conduct research.

Basically it sounds like high schools with giant lectures. But I'm not going to go through all the negative attributes of this proposal. The bottom line is that if it is cheaper and the credential you get at the end of the day is as valuable in the market as a more expensive credential, then a lot of students and parents will go for it.

I'm looking at this from another angle. But first, think about the students. Insert caveat about generalizations. Of course students want to get good jobs... someday. They want their education to lead to a job but they don't want an education that prepares them to work by asking them to, well, work. They mostly want to be students and live the student lifestyle. And who could blame them? You're only young once and all that. Besides we know that even the ones who are dead certain they know what they want to do will probably be doing something different five years after graduation.

For many students I think going to college is analogous to moving to a hip neighborhood in a big city. You move there b/c you want to live there. You get a job, of course, b/c you need one. And maybe you move to the city b/c you like the kind of jobs too but you really are there for the life. Switch courses for job and you can see the role education plays for many, many students... at least until senior year. Now we can deride that if we want, but my point is to understand our "consumers." They say they want certain things and maybe those things play a role in their purchase, but what they really want and how they will really use their educational purpose is another story. And it's the latter that is of import to faculty, at least from a rhetorical, audience-awareness standpoint.

Now, on to my alternate perspective.

One of the lines in Fried's article that really caught my eye was when he wrote, "A lecture format class of 25 students is much less effective than a class of 100 using an active learning format, but costs four times more per student to deliver." I understand what he's getting at. But to me this points to underperformance and maybe poor pedagogy in the small class.

As I've written here before, I went to Rutgers as an English/History double-major. The lion's share of my courses were 50+ enrollment lectures with occassional questions asked by faculty and students. I don't recall ever asking or answering a question in those courses. Of the smaller <30 courses, most were still essentially lecture-driven with discussion sprinkled in. I had a couple creative writing workshops. I remember working in groups on two or three occassions over 4 years. The long and short of it is that probably 80-90% of my courses could have been delivered in a football stadium without losing much in quality. Which is essentially to say they didn't have much quality to begin with, except for whatever value you might gain from listening to a 50 or 70 minute lecture. I could have made Rutgers a more valuable learning experience for myself. But I was learning a lot from working for a small computer business, playing music, and writing/reading on my own.

The problem with the 4-year degree isn't that it's too expensive (though it is). It's that it isn't valuable enough. Part of this is a PR/marketing/rhetorical problem: America mistrusts professors and intellectuals in general. They don't value the work we do. I think we need to make a concerted effort to change the perception both through individual colleges and professional organizations.

But the other part isn't just perception. Students come for the lifestyle and the certification. But they aren't paying tuition for the lifestyle; the tuition cost is the certification part. And what is it, exactly, that we are certifying? What are all these credits supposed to add up to?

• Job skills? Maybe. And maybe come junior or senior year, students start to think about job qualifications. But job skills are really an ongoing professional development thing.  And you're likely in a different profession in 5 years. So what really is the point of specific job skils?
• Core professional/disciplinary knowledge: I.e., there are foundations to being an engineer or an accountant or computer science. If you're going on to graduate school then you need foundational disciplinary knowledge. We're not talking specific job skills (though that could be a part) but entry into a profession. And this will work for some students, mostly the stronger ones, who will go on to graduate school or a professional degree.

But what about the large majority of students who will never go on after their BA/BS. What are they getting out of the deal? That is, if you graduate with a BA in English or Econ or Psych or Comm, what are we certifying?

• Literacy/communication skills
• General education
• Basic disciplinary knowledge (but not really anything bankable beyond literacy skills)

I don't think we need to change this list. I don't know if we can. If students have no real idea what they want to do and no immediate intention of going on to grad school, this is what we can offer. And I don't criticize students like that. I was like that.

Instead, we need to make this list more valuable. More on this later, I can't keep writing this post forever!

So yes, I just got my iPhone today and downloaded the Typepad app. It's pretty cool I must say. I'm not sure how much blogging I'll do from here. But thank god for error correction!

Obviously I am interested Kopelson's revisitation of ages old and still going tensions for the field of rhetoric and composition. The margins of my copy bear out busy strings of alternating yesses and questions; I suppose I'll focus this entry on a couple of the questions.

Any time I come across suggestions of the field's dissolution, I want to go as directly as I can to the evidence. What are the forms of evidence supporting this or that impression that the field is gradually changing toward some state of (presumably undesirable, even disastrous) dissolution? Also: What idyllic disciplinary model is lurking as the milk and honey benchmark against which judgments of dissolution are alleged? I mean that the suggestion of a trend toward dissolution conjures up an idealized state of the discipline. From when? Where? And just how abstract is it? (I have monkeyed with this idea in the diss, but also in some of the material on the side that won't make it into the diss, like the stuff on the Golden Age).

Kopelson puts it like this in one spot:

About the evidence: In this article, it amounts to (x? number) of survey responses from graduate students at two institutions--programs in the Consortium, I would guess, and a sampling of sources that have dealt more or less directly in reflections upon or critiques of disciplinarity: Dobrin, Spellmeyer, North, Swearingen, Mulderig, among others. Perhaps this is adequate for establishing dissolution, perhaps not. This is not to cast doubts on Kopelson's evidence (it is, after all, reflective of pocketed perceptions of dissolution), as much as it is to say that the change is more of situated (daresay anecdotal?) degree than of field-wide kind. And so I wonder how new this perceived sowing of "the seeds of dissolution" is, and just what does it put at risk? Following this evidence--surveys and selected sources, the next line carries the claim further: "the field of rhetoric and composition is, in the most extreme cases, gradually evacuating itself of its first term (if not explicitly in name, then implicitly in institutional practice) or, in other cases, is undergoing an interesting inversion of its titular terms" (770). The possibility of evacuation and inversion calls to mind the necessary ratios between theory and practice. Is the target ratio 50:50? Might be, depending on whether we are talking topical focus (i.e., research motivated by theory or practice) or activity itself (i.e., time spent theorizing versus time spent teaching). For graduate students, of course, these ratios vary, too. In our program, we have fellowships designed to relieve students of their teaching appointment so that they might devote greater time and energy to reading and writing (if executed well, the ratio becomes 100:0). But there are also program-level constraints on these ratios, right? Some places prefer a 70:30 split. Others, 80:20. We do not always determine them independently, nor are they constant over the arc of an appointment (through a graduate program of study or otherwise).

Here's a delayed release video clip from our stop at Hershey Park two weeks ago. Noteworthy not only because I tuned it using the new version of iMovie, but also because I discovered just how easy YouTube has made it to add annotations to video clips (which, I'm sorry to see, don't seem to be showing up on this embedded version of the clip). If that's not enough, there's body surfing, too, much of which Ph. is quite proud.

Reminds me of the rocket-boat scene from the 1:43-1:57 mark below, only longer.

The pedagogical imperative, Kopelson argues, is part of a problematic theory-practice relationship in rhetoric and composition studies. "Theory" comes with at least a couple of problems for rhetoric/composition. First, we end up doing hand-wringing over our anxieties that theory doesn't help people, and we ask, like Kopelson brings up, "whom does the theory serve?" Second, we fret over the argument that we only use other people's theory; we don't DO (our own) theory. I like what Kopelson says on 765: "Theory performs the invaluable service of tracing, often in order to fracture, the very consensus around 'reason.' This seems to me to be neither a 'mere' nor a 'sterile' exercise."

The material about theory/practice is most interesting to me insofar as it's connected to interdisciplinarity. Graduate students surveyed by Kopelson wanted the field to become a vibrant interdiscipline with cultural and political significance, but they expressed concern that we're not there yet. A couple of quotations:

[Survey respondents] defined theory, variously, as something we 'draw on,' 'borrow,' 'import' from other, 'different fields of knowledge' in order to 'apply' and 'use.'

That is, James seems to find our import-and-apply approach a testament to the very interdisciplinarity that he and so many other of our 'new converts' desire for the field. And in a way it is. But this approach attests to a certain, limited kind of interdisciplinarity only; to what Ellen Barton calls a 'one-way interdisciplinarity' (245), and also to a formulaic mode of inquiry that has for too long characterized composition’s relationship to other fields of study (p. 766).

Okay, fine. I want to make two points here. First, with all the articles, books, reviews, etc. being published, most people do well to read all the scholarship in their own fields. So if people in other fields aren't reading rhet-comp, maybe we shouldn't take it personally. Second, as a corollary, reception of our work in other fields isn't the kind of thing we can control.

This next quotation is a kicker, in my opinion (p. 768):

Though we have long foraged about in other bodies of knowledge—and, yes, to some innovative and crucial ends—we are still primarily importers only, consumers, an 'interdisciplinary' field, if it can be said that we are one, with little to no interdisciplinary influence. (Exceptions to this trend are perhaps our influence on assessment as a field and, in some locales at least, on secondary English education.) As Spellmeyer reminds us in 'Marginal Prospects,' even within the confines of the academy, 'College English and CCC cannot truthfully be said to circulate in the same universe as Critical Inquiry or Cultural Critique' (163).

Critical Inquiry? This is what we're going for? Is it that we want as many people to read our journals as these journals, or that we want to write the same kind of articles as Critical Inquiry and Cultural Critique? In either case, this seems like an "I wish I were taller" kind of goal -- not that they're tall and we're short, but that our scholarship is different, and that's okay. I want to raise another couple of points about interdisciplinarity. First, from Kopelson (p. 768):

Indeed, our field’s discussions of teaching—in the very journals mentioned by Spellmeyer—are not only what have helped define us, for better or worse, but are what should have positioned us perfectly to be an interdisciplinary exporter with, as James says, “much to offer . . . teachers and students throughout the academy.” In short, then, it is by no means only a testament to our own limitations, or to the potential interdisciplinary value of our work, that College English and College Composition and Communication do not circulate in other universes, but a testament to the perpetual devaluation of pedagogy itself.

Unfortunate, but a sensible point. And now what I want to say most vociferously: we can go back and forth about the nebulous notion of "impact," but I utterly disagree that we are just "consumers" of other disciplines and that the interdisciplinarity is just "one-way" (not that Kopelson is saying this). Do you think people in social studies of science, history of science, and philosophy of science don't read and cite Alan Gross and Jeanne Fahnestock? Do you think people in medical anthropology and women's studies don't read and cite Susan Wells and Mary Lay Schuster? And hello, Stanley Fish? Even my work has been cited in related fields. There are plenty of other examples.

Finally, I want to note the terms "rhetoric" and "composition," as well as several recent programs' alternative terms, such as "writing studies." Does "writing studies" succeed in reconciling the rhet-comp history, theory/professionalization, practice conflict?

Derek has chosen Karen Kopelson's "Sp(l)itting Images; or, Back to the Future of (Rhetoric and?) Composition" for our most recent rhet-comp blog seminar. I think it's a great choice, and here's the first part of my response:

Kopelson's article is a much-needed, frank discussion of the pedagogical imperative, the idea that any rhetoric and composition research project must necessarily have a "pedagogy hook," or a section about implications of the project for college composition. The pedagogical imperative, Kopelson points out, is for many a matter of ethics: our field's mission, and I use that word with all the evangelical valence it has, is to teach college students how to write. Kopelson brings up the argument that "our research is funded with student dollars," not that she agrees with it or says it's valid -- I don't think it's that simple by any means.

Kopelson's concern is that graduate students are too constrained by the pedagogical imperative and that it will overdetermine the future of the field. She also goes through a number of concerns about how the field of rhetoric and composition has gone about attempts at interdisciplinary scholarship as well as the creation and use of theory, which I'll get to in a later post.

Now, though, I need to explain how I came to the field of rhetoric and composition. I'll tell you why you should care about this a little later.

I got my B.A. having had courses in literature and linguistics. I was prepared very well in those areas, but I never took a rhetoric course. One was offered, but for whatever reason I didn't take it. When I set out to get an M.A., I wanted to study rhetoric simply because it was a gap in my knowledge. I said as much in my statement of purpose when applying to programs.

At Tennessee, my first semester in graduate school, I took a Classical Rhetoric course. It was like someone had taken me over to a big pile of wood, brick, sheetrock, and shingles and said, "okay, now build a house." That is to say, I was submerged in unfamiliar material and ways of thinking. The way I was taught composition had nothing to do with rhetoric but consisted of the modes.

Anyway, sometimes when I'm in this kind of situation, I think, eh, who needs it? But other times, I buckle down and stubbornly think, I MUST MASTER THIS. Rhetoric was one of those instances. I went on to get really into it, and you can see where that led me.

Kopelson's research is based on a survey of graduate students and professors at two universities. On pages 753-54, she writes:

When asked if they encouraged dissertating graduate students to do work that makes direct connections to pedagogy, the vast majority of our faculty respondents (over 80 percent) claimed to do so only when “appropriate”—that is, when a student’s “project calls for it by its very nature,” or when there are “clear pedagogical implications” to the work. Interestingly, however, the majority of students in our sample revealed feelings of intense pressure to create clear pedagogical implications and applications whether their projects led them in that direction or not, and, most tellingly I think, whether they experienced such pressure firsthand and directly or only as some vague sense of what is required by the field.

When I was at Minnesota doing my PhD, my professors never issued the pedagogical imperative. Still, like the students surveyed, I got the sense that I'd never succeed unless I could answer the "implications for pedagogy" question in a job interview and an article manuscript. My dissertation didn't have to do with pedagogy, but I put in a section in the conclusion about pedagogy anyway, as I wanted to align myself explicitly with composition, and I was coming out of a program that (at the time) was more known for technical communication.

“It’s not necessary,” [a faculty respondent writes], “to write five chapters about Heideggerian philosophy’s importance for broadening our conception of the rhetorical basis of epistemology only to turn to the last chapter and talk about teaching Heidegger to first-year students. I have seen people try similar moves, [and] have heard colleagues make such demands.

Like this faculty member, my committee members didn't think it was necessary, and I suspect that they felt it was a little tacked-on. But they didn't make me take it out. All this being said, I have four thoughts about the pedagogical imperative:

1. A pedagogical implications section is not necessary, but it's impressive if the researcher can explain implications for pedagogy. Along the lines of the argument that you don't really understand something unless you can explain it in clear, simple terms to a non-expert, it would really be something if the person in the Heidegger example COULD connect that research to first-year writing.

2. Not all rhet/comp people are passionate about teaching (and that's okay!). Those who are passionate about it, particularly the early leaders in the field whose cross-over from literature to composition due to love of teaching is described by Kopelson as a religious conversion narrative, have put the pedagogical imperative in place. Now you know why I explained how I came to the field. It's not that I don't enjoy teaching or don't think it's important, but I came to the field another way.

3. So much of this issue has to do with gatekeeping -- for jobs, grant funding, publications. I'd like to know this: how often does it actually occur that manuscripts are conditionally accepted pending insertion of pedagogical implications or rejected due to their absence?

4. Sometimes it takes TIME to figure out the connections of research and theory to pedagogy. A lot of time, years. Perhaps graduate students just want to be trusted to take that time.

More later on the use of theory and the terms "rhetoric" and "composition" (and new alternative terms).

I thought some of you would be interested in this story about file sharing of PDFs of textbooks. I found the story on FARK, and while I know the comment thread is long, it's worth reading; it's remarkable, some of the ingenious scams these students and former students have concocted to save money on books. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: it's time to make textbooks affordable.

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Ph. (far left) knocked in the opening goal in Monday night's summer league match versus West Genesee. I'm fairly sure W.G. brought their younger group; it ended with Ph. & Co. up, despite fielding a squad two players short of the usual eleven.

Not quite as intriguing, but almost: during the match the coach turned to me and asked, "Did Ph. tell you?"  He hadn't--not yet, anyway--but they need a sub (i.e., a warm body) to fill in as the adult at practice Sunday and to pace the sidelines during Monday evening's match. Sure, give me the whistle; I'll do it. Just this once.

Before our trip to Pa. early in July, "paint" was the only "daren't mention" in the house. Since then, we've added "swim" to the growing list.  From morning (not before dawn if we are lucky; then again, any topic of conversation is possible in the pre-dawn light during those super early wake-ups) until night, all other requested activities are a good distance behind painting and swimming. 

I haven't had much time to write here of late. I have been very busy with my students on my digital age ning site. Right now I'm running a cyberpunk literature grad course there. And we've stumbled into a conversation of interest here I think. It began with reading Hayles essay on flickering signifiers, an early nineties venture into what would become How we became posthuman. There was some fairly strong negative reaction of the type you would be familiar with if you teach such things.

• The language is unnecessarily convoluted
• She's "reading into" the texts too much
• The same point is reiterated
• It's so difficult to read!

I don't raise these responses to make light of my students! To the contrary, there response is something that we ought to consider with some seriousness. As such, we began a broader conversation about humanities scholarship in relation to their own work and writing (most of these students are public school teachers). And what do they say?

1. That scholarship in their area of study (literary studies) doesn't really have any impact on the real world (gosh, really?)
2. That their own studies and academic writing has little or no relevance to their professional work as teachers (for the most part these are middle and high school English teachers, btw).
3. That they get personal enjoyment from reading, discussing, and writing about literature.

There is certainly a sense that they believe literature might have value in the context of real world problems and that ideally there would be some connection between research and real world concerns, but they don't see it. And realistically they don't see it happening.

It's hardly a new problem, right? But I would think it is a little depressing to a grad student in a program where you don't see the content as realistically have value beyond personal enjoyment or the immediate context of the classroom. In this world, that is not enough. And it's not that I don't believe that literary studies has value. I believe it does. But our students struggle to see that value, even though, as English teachers, they are as close to being in our discipline as any profession could be. It's the other side of the process from that faced by the humanities scholar who must recognize that her work drops into an ocean of media and scholarship with little hope of substantive readership or conversation resulting.  Our students stand on the shore of the information ocean without a sense of how or why to engage it.