I am almost too good at "doing" nothing -- to the point where the guilt feelings that accompany it are a bit overwhelming. I was raised in house where it wasn't unusual to "do" nothing. My mother always jokes that she is going to open a business that involves teaching people how to sit around in their pajamas, drinking tea, and not doing much of anything at all. We were all very good at just "hanging out." I was never bored on summer vacations. I never yearned to get back to school simply so that I could get out of the house. I loved the idea of endless days of nothingness.
Of course it is different now. I am an adult and do in fact have many things that I must *do*. However, so far this week I have never made it out of my PJs before noon, and I'm always starting my second cup of tea around 10:30 or 11. It is with that second cup of tea that I sit down and write, so that I am at least doing "something."
After I hit "publish," I'll probably head back to my oversized, comfy chair in the living room and continue on with nothing in particular.
My mother would be proud!
Friday, May 18, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
first day of summer vacation
Yesterday I turned in my grades (finally!) shortly after noon. At about 4:30 I was abruptly hit with a terrible sore throat and runny nose. My body has been so wound up with stress that the minute I let my shoulders move away from my ears a bit -- bang -- I'm overcome with a summer cold. I'm pretty bummed about that as it really delays the start of my summer plans, which involve a lot of intense physical activity (including cleaning) and moving around. So I didn't get to tackle my overhaul/spring cleaning of the our front enclosed porch today, but here is what I did do:
This morning I read Convergence Culture until lunch.
After lunch I went out in the yard and planted the last few annuals that I had not yet put into the ground. It was exquisite out. And I forgot for moment how miserable I feel -- except for the fact that my nose kept running.
I came in and flipped through the latest REI catalog, allowing myself to daydream about summer adventures on bikes and in the woods, on the trails, etc.
Went back outdoors with Cheyanne, set up a lawn chair, and sat down with Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, which I've never read before and is one of my summer fun books. I got about three pages into it, and it began to rain. Got up, put the lawn chair in the garage with my cell phone now folded into the cup holder.
Not too bad for the first day of summer "vacation." I'm trying to really recover quickly here and not let this cold take over my life. I have Ultimate frisbee scheduled for tomorrow night and a big gym workout planned for Thursday...and maybe a yoga class on Thursday morning, so I really can't be sick for too long.
Tomorrow I have plans to help stuff envelopes for Pride at the local gay and lesbian community center. Seems like a worthwhile, yet somewhat mindless task to take on immediately following the end-of-semester mayhem.
I have definite intentions to get back to blogging this summer, as I'll be starting to write the chapters of my dissertation, but for the next week or so, I'll be taking it easy. Any blogging I do will be about my attempt to gorge myself on pop culture, as I ease myself back into my diss work.
This morning I read Convergence Culture until lunch.
After lunch I went out in the yard and planted the last few annuals that I had not yet put into the ground. It was exquisite out. And I forgot for moment how miserable I feel -- except for the fact that my nose kept running.
I came in and flipped through the latest REI catalog, allowing myself to daydream about summer adventures on bikes and in the woods, on the trails, etc.
Went back outdoors with Cheyanne, set up a lawn chair, and sat down with Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, which I've never read before and is one of my summer fun books. I got about three pages into it, and it began to rain. Got up, put the lawn chair in the garage with my cell phone now folded into the cup holder.
Not too bad for the first day of summer "vacation." I'm trying to really recover quickly here and not let this cold take over my life. I have Ultimate frisbee scheduled for tomorrow night and a big gym workout planned for Thursday...and maybe a yoga class on Thursday morning, so I really can't be sick for too long.
Tomorrow I have plans to help stuff envelopes for Pride at the local gay and lesbian community center. Seems like a worthwhile, yet somewhat mindless task to take on immediately following the end-of-semester mayhem.
I have definite intentions to get back to blogging this summer, as I'll be starting to write the chapters of my dissertation, but for the next week or so, I'll be taking it easy. Any blogging I do will be about my attempt to gorge myself on pop culture, as I ease myself back into my diss work.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
HELP w/ citation
I have no idea where I got this quote and citation from:
“The computer classroom has often been hailed as…a social-democratic space, helping to promote a liberatory pedagogy by fostering student resistance, empowering students by decentering the classroom” (Walker 119).
I can't remember anything about reading this, where I got it from, who "Walker" is (jill? Henry?). If anybody recognizes the article? essay? book? this might be from, please contact me.
---
Update:
Walker, Janice R. "Resisting Resistance: Power and Control in the
Technologized Classroom." In _Insurrection: Approaches to Resistance in
Composition Studies_. Ed. Andrea Greenbaum. Albany: SUNY, 2001. 119-32.
Thanks to all those who came to the rescue!
“The computer classroom has often been hailed as…a social-democratic space, helping to promote a liberatory pedagogy by fostering student resistance, empowering students by decentering the classroom” (Walker 119).
I can't remember anything about reading this, where I got it from, who "Walker" is (jill? Henry?). If anybody recognizes the article? essay? book? this might be from, please contact me.
---
Update:
Walker, Janice R. "Resisting Resistance: Power and Control in the
Technologized Classroom." In _Insurrection: Approaches to Resistance in
Composition Studies_. Ed. Andrea Greenbaum. Albany: SUNY, 2001. 119-32.
Thanks to all those who came to the rescue!
Thursday, April 12, 2007
How do *you* stop procrastinating?
For two days now I've been procrastinating, paralyzed, putting off my prospectus revision. It is due to the department tomorrow, and it feels too big. I can't even get myself to open the proper documents, because it feels impossible to pull it all together by tomorrow.
Intead
I've been looking at houses online, reading Cary Tennis columns on Salon, (re)reading e-mails, watching Clancy's "take" on Take 20, rearranging my netflix queue, getting cups of coffee and cappucinos, writing silly blog posts, reading articles on Kurt Vonnegut. I need to
stop.
But how?
Intead
I've been looking at houses online, reading Cary Tennis columns on Salon, (re)reading e-mails, watching Clancy's "take" on Take 20, rearranging my netflix queue, getting cups of coffee and cappucinos, writing silly blog posts, reading articles on Kurt Vonnegut. I need to
stop.
But how?
Monday, April 09, 2007
Timeline of Cultural Studies
Timeline of Cultural Studies
This timeline comes primarily out of the narratives of cultural studies as told by Raymond Williams in “The Future of Cultural Studies,” Lawrence Grossberg in “The Formations of Cultural Studies: An American in Birmingham,” and Stuart Hall’s “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies.” The connections between cultural studies and composition have been made with the help of Diana George and John Trimbur’s chapter on cultural studies in A Guide to Composition Pedagogies edited by Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. As each essay stresses, cultural studies is not a stable entity, so every account of its “story”or history is provisional (making this a more difficult timeline to create, as timelines force chronology, than the previous critical pedagogy timeline). With that caveat – here is my timeline:
30s/40s/50s: Raymond Williams in his (1989) piece "The Future of Cultural Studies" (edited transcript from a 1986 lecture) focuses on the influence of cultural studies on adult education during this time period. (This is Williams' "alternative" reading of the history of cultural studies, which he says is normally sited through texts). Williams also points to traces of "what you could now fairly call ' Cultural Studies'" in the works of Leavis and Scrutiny (153).
Appearance of "mass culture" after WWII through "the rationalization, capitalization and technologization of the mass media" (Grossberg 24) is key to the emergence of cultural studies.
1956: British New Left emerges against the backdrop of the Hungarian Revolution -- as Hall points out it (in "Cultural studies and its Theoretical Legacies”) was a moment in which a certain kind of marxism was disintegrating, and this fact problematizes the view of British cultural studies as a marxist critical practice. Notion of this as the founding moment is cultural studies is, according to Hall, a mistake/misreading. And, according to Hall, "there was never a prior moment when cultural studies and marxism represented a perfect theoretical fit" (265).
According to Lawrence Grossberg, the New Left developed, in part, to confront the ways in which traditional marxism failed to address "the beginnings of late capitalism, the new forms of economic and political colonialism and imperialism..." (25).
1957: Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy
1958: Raymond Williams: Culture and Society
1960s: Brought in subcultures that resisted some aspects of dominant structures of power and became part of the focus of work being done in cultural studies.
1963: E.P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class
1964 (or 63?): Richard Hoggart founds the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham
1968: Stuart Hall becomes director of CCCS
1969: England establishes its first "open" learning university. This Open University signifies a shift, according to Williams in that tie between cultural studies and adult education; however it is at this moment, sites Williams, that "what became Cultural Studies occurred": Whereas students (in adult ed) had been demanding that education/discussion be in relation to their own experiences and situations and that they retain some right to decide on their own syllabus; the Open University "deliberately" interrupted this. So it was on the one hand popular access, but it also inserted "a technology over and above the movement of the culture" (157). Williams defends the more "more basic right" of these people "to define the questions" (157).
1970s: British cultural studies advances within "the problematic of Marxism" (Hall "Cultural studies and its Theoretical Legacies" 266). Problematic = a struggle, an actual problem.
Ideas of Gramsci radically displace ideas of Marxism within cultural studies (Hall "Cultural studies and its Theoretical Legacies" 267) – Centre trying to produce an "organic intellectual." Gramsci also served a "middle-ground" for those who feared readings of Althusser that took him to “the post-structuralist realm of the necessary lack of correspondence” (because those ignores the materialist question of the role of ideology) (Grossberg 28).
This Gramscian position “defined cultural studies as a non-reductionist Marxism which was concerned with understanding specific historical contexts and formations, which assumed the lack of guarantees in history and the reality of struggles by which historical relationships are produced” (29). Grossberg describes this as a “conjuncturalist theory,” which does not assume all practices equate to culture (anti-totality/humanism of Williams) and recognizes real structures of power. It sees history as being produced by individuals as they struggle within determinate conditions.
Cultural studies emerges as "a disciplinary formation" in the confrontation between the humanistic Marxism of Williams, Thompson, and Hoggart and the anti-humanism of Athusser's structural marxism.
Political and theoretical work being done on gender and sexual orientation “interrupted” the work of cultural studies.
The New Right emerges in Britain, and the "traditional left seemed incapable of offering coherent strategies and responses" (Grossberg 26).
80s/90s— Thatcher regime managed to undermine the infrastructure in Britain, while the left is distanced from the majority of the population (seen in academics/students—in part) and unable to secure ground from which to organize opposition.
These political and historical concerns placed cultural studies in some cases on one side—for example, when it criticized post-structuralism and psychoanalysis for abandoning materialism—but most often CS placed itself between two extremes—for example, Hall’s call for a space for CS between structuralism and culturalism.
1980: Stuart Hall: "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms" -- reading Williams and Althusser against each other
1986/1989: Raymond Williams: "The Future of Cultural Studies" -- ultimately, Williams does not really see the sense of approaching cultural studies in terms of an intellectual history as it may obscure from us "a historic opportunity for a new Cultural Studies formation" (161)--whose time is now. "Cultural Studies has been about...taking the best we can in intellectual work and going with it in this very open way to confront people for whom it is not a way of life, for whom it is not in any probability a job, but for whom it is a matter of their own intellectual interests, their own understanding of the pressures on them, pressures of every kind, from the most personal to the most broadly political..." (162).
Williams focus on cultural studies’ role in adult education is a point of convergence between cultural studies and composition, as Diana George and John Trimbur point out in their chapter on cultural studies (2001 Tate, Rupiper, Schick 78-9).
Richard Johnson: "What is Cultural studies, Anyway?"
1987: Martin Allor describes the term cultural studies as a "cultural commodity" (Grossberg 21).
1988: John Trimbur: "Cultural Studies and the Teaching of Writing"
Ties in with Williams' account of cultural studies' work in adult education, as Trimbur sees composition emerging out of the need to "represent students and adult learners stigmatized as uneducable because of cognitive deficiencies, the culture of poverty, or the restricted codes of oral culture" (Tate... 80).
1989: Lawrence Grossberg, in "The Circulation of Cultural Studies," describes cultural studies as an ambiguous term used to refer to what had been previously thought of as "critical theory" (i.e. competing theories (lit theory and anthropology; communication and pop culture) of the relation of between society and culture, ideology and art, etc.)
80s/90s: Cultural studies appears on the scene in composition studies (Reagan-Bush era reaction much like critical pedagogy).
1991: Schilb, John. “Cultural Studies, Postmodernism, and Composition.”
1992: Stuart Hall: "Cultural studies and its Theoretical Legacies"-- is not telling the definitive story of cultural studies, not the only way of telling this history of cultural studies. Hall wants to point to certain theoretical moments and what those moments have been like for him. Cultural studies has "no simple origins" (discursive in Foucault's sense of the word). Cultural studies "has a number of different histories" (263).
Entering the era of "post-marxism"
James Berlin and Michael Vivion, eds: Cultural Studies in the English Classroom -- cultural studies restored rhetoric as central to the curriculum displacing the previously privileged (by English departments) poetics.
Lester Faigley: Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition
1993: Lawrence Grossberg: "The Formation(s) of Cultural Studies: An American in Birmingham" -- Grossberg traces a somewhat brief (with a fairly narrow focus) history of the conception of and debates within cultural studies. He spends a lot of time making clear his point that since its inception cultural studies has been an unstable and changing “field.” While there is no single cultural studies position, it is important to understand its history, its projects that have shaped its identity. He refers to this as cultural studies’ “unity-in-difference.” He offers two histories of cultural studies -- the "normative" or "standard" account and the "war of positions" account -- ultimately arguing that the development of cultural studies is not linear. A linear or teleological account of cultural studies "ignores the continuous debates within and between the positions offered" (31). Grossberg chooses eight theoretical problematics or sites of warfare and then lays out five positions illustrating a more fractured and uneven trajectory of CS:
I literary humanism (Williams and Hoggart)
II effort to define a dialectical sociology
III Centre position (culturalism) -- studies of youth subculture and encoding/decoding mass communication
IV structural-conjuncturalist position
V a postmodern-conjuncturalist position
1994: Composition textbook: Signs of Life in the USA
1995: Karen Fitts and Alan France: Left Margins: Cultural Studies and Composition Pedagogy
1996: James Berlin: Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring English Studies.
This timeline comes primarily out of the narratives of cultural studies as told by Raymond Williams in “The Future of Cultural Studies,” Lawrence Grossberg in “The Formations of Cultural Studies: An American in Birmingham,” and Stuart Hall’s “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies.” The connections between cultural studies and composition have been made with the help of Diana George and John Trimbur’s chapter on cultural studies in A Guide to Composition Pedagogies edited by Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. As each essay stresses, cultural studies is not a stable entity, so every account of its “story”or history is provisional (making this a more difficult timeline to create, as timelines force chronology, than the previous critical pedagogy timeline). With that caveat – here is my timeline:
30s/40s/50s: Raymond Williams in his (1989) piece "The Future of Cultural Studies" (edited transcript from a 1986 lecture) focuses on the influence of cultural studies on adult education during this time period. (This is Williams' "alternative" reading of the history of cultural studies, which he says is normally sited through texts). Williams also points to traces of "what you could now fairly call ' Cultural Studies'" in the works of Leavis and Scrutiny (153).
Appearance of "mass culture" after WWII through "the rationalization, capitalization and technologization of the mass media" (Grossberg 24) is key to the emergence of cultural studies.
1956: British New Left emerges against the backdrop of the Hungarian Revolution -- as Hall points out it (in "Cultural studies and its Theoretical Legacies”) was a moment in which a certain kind of marxism was disintegrating, and this fact problematizes the view of British cultural studies as a marxist critical practice. Notion of this as the founding moment is cultural studies is, according to Hall, a mistake/misreading. And, according to Hall, "there was never a prior moment when cultural studies and marxism represented a perfect theoretical fit" (265).
According to Lawrence Grossberg, the New Left developed, in part, to confront the ways in which traditional marxism failed to address "the beginnings of late capitalism, the new forms of economic and political colonialism and imperialism..." (25).
1957: Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy
1958: Raymond Williams: Culture and Society
1960s: Brought in subcultures that resisted some aspects of dominant structures of power and became part of the focus of work being done in cultural studies.
1963: E.P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class
1964 (or 63?): Richard Hoggart founds the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham
1968: Stuart Hall becomes director of CCCS
1969: England establishes its first "open" learning university. This Open University signifies a shift, according to Williams in that tie between cultural studies and adult education; however it is at this moment, sites Williams, that "what became Cultural Studies occurred": Whereas students (in adult ed) had been demanding that education/discussion be in relation to their own experiences and situations and that they retain some right to decide on their own syllabus; the Open University "deliberately" interrupted this. So it was on the one hand popular access, but it also inserted "a technology over and above the movement of the culture" (157). Williams defends the more "more basic right" of these people "to define the questions" (157).
1970s: British cultural studies advances within "the problematic of Marxism" (Hall "Cultural studies and its Theoretical Legacies" 266). Problematic = a struggle, an actual problem.
Ideas of Gramsci radically displace ideas of Marxism within cultural studies (Hall "Cultural studies and its Theoretical Legacies" 267) – Centre trying to produce an "organic intellectual." Gramsci also served a "middle-ground" for those who feared readings of Althusser that took him to “the post-structuralist realm of the necessary lack of correspondence” (because those ignores the materialist question of the role of ideology) (Grossberg 28).
This Gramscian position “defined cultural studies as a non-reductionist Marxism which was concerned with understanding specific historical contexts and formations, which assumed the lack of guarantees in history and the reality of struggles by which historical relationships are produced” (29). Grossberg describes this as a “conjuncturalist theory,” which does not assume all practices equate to culture (anti-totality/humanism of Williams) and recognizes real structures of power. It sees history as being produced by individuals as they struggle within determinate conditions.
Cultural studies emerges as "a disciplinary formation" in the confrontation between the humanistic Marxism of Williams, Thompson, and Hoggart and the anti-humanism of Athusser's structural marxism.
Political and theoretical work being done on gender and sexual orientation “interrupted” the work of cultural studies.
The New Right emerges in Britain, and the "traditional left seemed incapable of offering coherent strategies and responses" (Grossberg 26).
80s/90s— Thatcher regime managed to undermine the infrastructure in Britain, while the left is distanced from the majority of the population (seen in academics/students—in part) and unable to secure ground from which to organize opposition.
These political and historical concerns placed cultural studies in some cases on one side—for example, when it criticized post-structuralism and psychoanalysis for abandoning materialism—but most often CS placed itself between two extremes—for example, Hall’s call for a space for CS between structuralism and culturalism.
1980: Stuart Hall: "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms" -- reading Williams and Althusser against each other
1986/1989: Raymond Williams: "The Future of Cultural Studies" -- ultimately, Williams does not really see the sense of approaching cultural studies in terms of an intellectual history as it may obscure from us "a historic opportunity for a new Cultural Studies formation" (161)--whose time is now. "Cultural Studies has been about...taking the best we can in intellectual work and going with it in this very open way to confront people for whom it is not a way of life, for whom it is not in any probability a job, but for whom it is a matter of their own intellectual interests, their own understanding of the pressures on them, pressures of every kind, from the most personal to the most broadly political..." (162).
Williams focus on cultural studies’ role in adult education is a point of convergence between cultural studies and composition, as Diana George and John Trimbur point out in their chapter on cultural studies (2001 Tate, Rupiper, Schick 78-9).
Richard Johnson: "What is Cultural studies, Anyway?"
1987: Martin Allor describes the term cultural studies as a "cultural commodity" (Grossberg 21).
1988: John Trimbur: "Cultural Studies and the Teaching of Writing"
Ties in with Williams' account of cultural studies' work in adult education, as Trimbur sees composition emerging out of the need to "represent students and adult learners stigmatized as uneducable because of cognitive deficiencies, the culture of poverty, or the restricted codes of oral culture" (Tate... 80).
1989: Lawrence Grossberg, in "The Circulation of Cultural Studies," describes cultural studies as an ambiguous term used to refer to what had been previously thought of as "critical theory" (i.e. competing theories (lit theory and anthropology; communication and pop culture) of the relation of between society and culture, ideology and art, etc.)
80s/90s: Cultural studies appears on the scene in composition studies (Reagan-Bush era reaction much like critical pedagogy).
1991: Schilb, John. “Cultural Studies, Postmodernism, and Composition.”
1992: Stuart Hall: "Cultural studies and its Theoretical Legacies"-- is not telling the definitive story of cultural studies, not the only way of telling this history of cultural studies. Hall wants to point to certain theoretical moments and what those moments have been like for him. Cultural studies has "no simple origins" (discursive in Foucault's sense of the word). Cultural studies "has a number of different histories" (263).
Entering the era of "post-marxism"
James Berlin and Michael Vivion, eds: Cultural Studies in the English Classroom -- cultural studies restored rhetoric as central to the curriculum displacing the previously privileged (by English departments) poetics.
Lester Faigley: Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition
1993: Lawrence Grossberg: "The Formation(s) of Cultural Studies: An American in Birmingham" -- Grossberg traces a somewhat brief (with a fairly narrow focus) history of the conception of and debates within cultural studies. He spends a lot of time making clear his point that since its inception cultural studies has been an unstable and changing “field.” While there is no single cultural studies position, it is important to understand its history, its projects that have shaped its identity. He refers to this as cultural studies’ “unity-in-difference.” He offers two histories of cultural studies -- the "normative" or "standard" account and the "war of positions" account -- ultimately arguing that the development of cultural studies is not linear. A linear or teleological account of cultural studies "ignores the continuous debates within and between the positions offered" (31). Grossberg chooses eight theoretical problematics or sites of warfare and then lays out five positions illustrating a more fractured and uneven trajectory of CS:
I literary humanism (Williams and Hoggart)
II effort to define a dialectical sociology
III Centre position (culturalism) -- studies of youth subculture and encoding/decoding mass communication
IV structural-conjuncturalist position
V a postmodern-conjuncturalist position
1994: Composition textbook: Signs of Life in the USA
1995: Karen Fitts and Alan France: Left Margins: Cultural Studies and Composition Pedagogy
1996: James Berlin: Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring English Studies.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Timeline of Critical Pedagogy
I am being asked, as part of my prospectus to include a genealogy of both critical pedagogy and cultural studies. In moving toward this goal, I have started to create a timeline of critical pedagogy in order to gain a clear(er) picture of the historical trajectory (a BIG thanks to my friend Shari for her help with all of this).
Here is what I have so far (with the italicized portions being my vague thoughts):
Timeline of Critical Pedagogy
late 19thC./early 20th C: much of American critical pedagogy has its roots in the progressivism of this time period, exemplified in the work of John Dewey and his philosophy of Pragmatism. Dewey's educational philosophy included an emphasis on student-centered learning and participation in democratic life that is also at the heart of much contemporary critical pedagogy.
1970: Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed -- the "go to" text for critical pedagogy
1980s: radical educators in the US speak out about education as "sorting mechanism" (McLaren qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, Schick 94) and as an apparatus of reproduction of the ideology and power of dominant groups; boom in critical pedagogy scholarship during Reagan-Bush years (Tate, Rupiper Schick 95).
1980: Shor's Critical Teaching and Everyday Life = critique of community college system
1983: Giroux's Theory and Resistance in Education
1985: Giroux and Aronowitz: Education under Seige
1986: Giroux and McLaren "Teacher Education and the Politics of Engagement: The Case for Democratic Schooling" -- argues for school as "democratic public sphere"
Problem is that twenty years later, after working in various classroom spaces with critical pedagogy, the university's potential as "democratic public sphere" is being infringed upon by corporate interests and a corporate administrative mentality. It is not enough to simply say this space should be democratic, so lets enact that in our classrooms; first we need to carefully make note of the ways in which the space within which our classroom exists (and even that classroom itself) might not be democratic, where and when are the moments in which we do not exercise control or have a voice in our education, our teaching, and so on because of corporate interests.
1987: Shor's Freire for the Classroom: teachers from varied disciplines contributed essays to this collection illustrating the applicability of Freirean pedagogy in their classrooms
In this text, Shor points out that "it's a tricky business to organize an untraditional class in a traditional school.". This difficulty in implementing critical pedagogy when the majority of students are accustomed to receiving some form of traditional, mainstream education is taken up more recently by William Thelin in his works on "blundering", and is an idea that has also become a part of the debate between Thelin and Russel Durst (Jeff Smith, in his article, "Students' Goals, Gatemkeeping, and Some Questions of Ethics), seems to be making an argument similar to Durst's .
1988: Giroux's Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life -- points to "cultural production" as opposed to reproduction b/c Giroux (and Aronowitz) see schools not as merely reproductive apparatuses, but also as sites of resistance (Tate... 96).
The 90s bring in a more cautious approach to critical pedagogy. Hurlbert and Blitz's collection illustrates educators debating and arguing over all aspects of critical pedagogy (in stark contrast to Shor's 1987 celebratory collection); Maxine Hairston expresses great concern over a composition instructor's ability to handle political topics in the classroom, and Gregory Jay and Gerald Graff provide a critique and an alternative ("teach the conflicts") that they'd still justify as radical or progressive.
1991: Hurlbert and Blitz's collection Composition and Resistance
1992: Maxine Hairston makes her now famous attack on critical pedagogy, arguing against the idea of the politicized writing classroom
1993: Jennifer Gore's The Struggle for Pedagogies -- she lays out the differences between Shor's critical pedagogy and Giroux's critical pedagogy, and in so doing, critiques Giroux's scholarship.
1995: Gregory Jay and Gerald Graff's "A Critique of Critical Pedagogy" is included in Michael Berube's and Cary Nelson' Higher Education Under Fire -- in it they site the ways in which critical pedagogy implemented can fall into the "banking model" Freire warns us against.
1999: Pepi Leistyna Presence of Mind: Education and the Politics of Deception
Russel Durst: Collision Course: Conflict, Negotiation, and Learning in College Composition
2000: Amy Lee: Composing Critical Pedagogies
William Thelin and John Tassoni, eds: Blundering for a Change: Errors and Expectations in Critical Pedagogy
2001: Joe Hardin: Opening Spaces: critical pedagogy and resistance theory in composition
Andrea Greenbaum: Insurrections: Approaches to Resistance in Composition Studies
2005: William Thelin: "Understanding Problems in Critical Classrooms"
2006: CCC "Interchanges" Durst/Thelin
Robert Yagelski: "'Radical to Many in the Educational Establishment': The Writing Process Movement after the Hurricanes"
I know I am probably missing a lot. Any suggestions? Offerings? Addendums? Additions?
Now the goal is to actually turn this into a genealogy with the goal of illustrating silences around or gaps in attention to the situatedness of these pedagogical practices, these critical pedagogy classrooms in the corporate university.
Here is what I have so far (with the italicized portions being my vague thoughts):
Timeline of Critical Pedagogy
late 19thC./early 20th C: much of American critical pedagogy has its roots in the progressivism of this time period, exemplified in the work of John Dewey and his philosophy of Pragmatism. Dewey's educational philosophy included an emphasis on student-centered learning and participation in democratic life that is also at the heart of much contemporary critical pedagogy.
1970: Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed -- the "go to" text for critical pedagogy
1980s: radical educators in the US speak out about education as "sorting mechanism" (McLaren qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, Schick 94) and as an apparatus of reproduction of the ideology and power of dominant groups; boom in critical pedagogy scholarship during Reagan-Bush years (Tate, Rupiper Schick 95).
1980: Shor's Critical Teaching and Everyday Life = critique of community college system
1983: Giroux's Theory and Resistance in Education
1985: Giroux and Aronowitz: Education under Seige
1986: Giroux and McLaren "Teacher Education and the Politics of Engagement: The Case for Democratic Schooling" -- argues for school as "democratic public sphere"
Problem is that twenty years later, after working in various classroom spaces with critical pedagogy, the university's potential as "democratic public sphere" is being infringed upon by corporate interests and a corporate administrative mentality. It is not enough to simply say this space should be democratic, so lets enact that in our classrooms; first we need to carefully make note of the ways in which the space within which our classroom exists (and even that classroom itself) might not be democratic, where and when are the moments in which we do not exercise control or have a voice in our education, our teaching, and so on because of corporate interests.
1987: Shor's Freire for the Classroom: teachers from varied disciplines contributed essays to this collection illustrating the applicability of Freirean pedagogy in their classrooms
In this text, Shor points out that "it's a tricky business to organize an untraditional class in a traditional school.". This difficulty in implementing critical pedagogy when the majority of students are accustomed to receiving some form of traditional, mainstream education is taken up more recently by William Thelin in his works on "blundering", and is an idea that has also become a part of the debate between Thelin and Russel Durst (Jeff Smith, in his article, "Students' Goals, Gatemkeeping, and Some Questions of Ethics), seems to be making an argument similar to Durst's .
1988: Giroux's Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life -- points to "cultural production" as opposed to reproduction b/c Giroux (and Aronowitz) see schools not as merely reproductive apparatuses, but also as sites of resistance (Tate... 96).
The 90s bring in a more cautious approach to critical pedagogy. Hurlbert and Blitz's collection illustrates educators debating and arguing over all aspects of critical pedagogy (in stark contrast to Shor's 1987 celebratory collection); Maxine Hairston expresses great concern over a composition instructor's ability to handle political topics in the classroom, and Gregory Jay and Gerald Graff provide a critique and an alternative ("teach the conflicts") that they'd still justify as radical or progressive.
1991: Hurlbert and Blitz's collection Composition and Resistance
1992: Maxine Hairston makes her now famous attack on critical pedagogy, arguing against the idea of the politicized writing classroom
1993: Jennifer Gore's The Struggle for Pedagogies -- she lays out the differences between Shor's critical pedagogy and Giroux's critical pedagogy, and in so doing, critiques Giroux's scholarship.
1995: Gregory Jay and Gerald Graff's "A Critique of Critical Pedagogy" is included in Michael Berube's and Cary Nelson' Higher Education Under Fire -- in it they site the ways in which critical pedagogy implemented can fall into the "banking model" Freire warns us against.
1999: Pepi Leistyna Presence of Mind: Education and the Politics of Deception
Russel Durst: Collision Course: Conflict, Negotiation, and Learning in College Composition
2000: Amy Lee: Composing Critical Pedagogies
William Thelin and John Tassoni, eds: Blundering for a Change: Errors and Expectations in Critical Pedagogy
2001: Joe Hardin: Opening Spaces: critical pedagogy and resistance theory in composition
Andrea Greenbaum: Insurrections: Approaches to Resistance in Composition Studies
2005: William Thelin: "Understanding Problems in Critical Classrooms"
2006: CCC "Interchanges" Durst/Thelin
Robert Yagelski: "'Radical to Many in the Educational Establishment': The Writing Process Movement after the Hurricanes"
I know I am probably missing a lot. Any suggestions? Offerings? Addendums? Additions?
Now the goal is to actually turn this into a genealogy with the goal of illustrating silences around or gaps in attention to the situatedness of these pedagogical practices, these critical pedagogy classrooms in the corporate university.
giving student feedback -- an observation
This semester I've been giving a lot of feeback to my students via e-mail. I do this for two of their assignments in particular: close readings and group presentations. After a group presents I try to come straight back to my office and type up all the notes I took during the presentation and send them to each group member (along with individual feedback on his/her particular role in the presentation).
What I've been noticing is that students respond! I get an e-mail back. Sometimes the e-mail simply thanks me for my feedback, some point out the specific ways in which the feedback was helpful, some make clear their understanding of a point I've made, some defend themselves, and so on. I love this!
I know this is nothing truly new or earth-shaking. Instructors, including myself, have been responding to students electronically (in various forms) for a long time. Last semester, though, I tended to respond electronically in the form of comments on their blogs. I still do this, but I notice a big difference when I write them an e-mail. Students rarely (to never) pick up the dialogue that I attempt to start when commenting on their blogs -- even with all the in-class time spent talking about the potential for dialogue through these online spaces; however, for whatever reason, they seem much more compelled to hit that reply button. Maybe the "email is for old people" mentality hasn't quite hit my campus yet...?
What I've been noticing is that students respond! I get an e-mail back. Sometimes the e-mail simply thanks me for my feedback, some point out the specific ways in which the feedback was helpful, some make clear their understanding of a point I've made, some defend themselves, and so on. I love this!
I know this is nothing truly new or earth-shaking. Instructors, including myself, have been responding to students electronically (in various forms) for a long time. Last semester, though, I tended to respond electronically in the form of comments on their blogs. I still do this, but I notice a big difference when I write them an e-mail. Students rarely (to never) pick up the dialogue that I attempt to start when commenting on their blogs -- even with all the in-class time spent talking about the potential for dialogue through these online spaces; however, for whatever reason, they seem much more compelled to hit that reply button. Maybe the "email is for old people" mentality hasn't quite hit my campus yet...?
Monday, April 02, 2007
Day Two: CCCC
Dennis Jerz from Seton Hill and Sally Chandler from Kean University brought along some graduate students and put together a panel/session called “When Student Experts Remix the Discipline: New Media in the Composition Classroom.” And there was pretty good turnout, considering that these graduate students were “up against” the likes of David Bartholomae and Gerald Graff in the Grand Ballroom.
Student 1- Mike Rubino presented on multiple-authored blogs and collaborating in academic environments. He pointed out differences between academic discussion blogs, which seek to toss around various ideas on a shared topic and focused message blogs, which have a singular message they want to get across to the readers.
Student 2- Matthew Harabin presented ways to teach with EBay in order to develop students’ analytical and critical thinking skills.
Student 3- Amanda Cochran studied blog desertion, focusing specifically on why college students desert their blogs. She argued that this is not a “bad” thing, that it actually shows a “wising up” of these students, as they take in horror stories about bloggers who end up being punished (lost jobs, incarceration—such as the Egyptian blogger arrested over his critiques of religion, etc.) over something they’ve written. Students also showed concern over their blogs being inaccurate representations of their writing skills. This “moving on” she argued is a positive representation of students’ understanding of new media. She described students “moving on” to “gated communities” like Facebook and MySpace.
I guess I don’t see MySpace or Facebook (though I have never used the latter) as “gated communities” per se. Anyone has access to them, and there is ample information about the possibility of losing jobs (or not getting hired for one) on account of a myspace profile. Now I am not weighing in on the controversy here over whether or not this is fair or an invasion of privacy or what kind of “space” (public or otherwise) that myspace might be. I’m just not sure that a “moving on” to myspace or Facebook can accurately be described as a “wising up”, but I found the topic of blog desertion interesting. A couple of audience members described it maybe not as desertion per se, but rather as a kind of moving on. I also wasn’t entirely clear on Amanda’s distinctions between academic and social blogging. Isn’t all blogging supposed to be social?
Student 4 – Nadia Lahens presented on fan fiction and entertained the audience with a quote taken from Anne Rice’s website: “I do not allow fan fiction….” Rice goes on to say that writers of fan fiction must obey her wishes (I don’t have the exact quote for this).
During the discussion one audience member mentioned that we all laughed at Rice’s comment, but that to some extent her comment is understandable – that we are all somewhat protective of our own work. I personally laughed at Rice’s comment because it’s not as if Anne Rice created the vampire story herself. Her lack of recognition of her own “remixing,” her own version of fan fiction, is what made me laugh (an annoyed kind of laughter...more like a grunt, I guess).
Finally, Sally Chandler presented on youth culture in the (composition) classroom with a focus on remixing and its reliance on parody. She discussed the differences between digital and material space: digital space is immersive, interactive, symbol mediated, and information intensive. The mindset is or has to be different when working in a digital space as compared to material space. How, she asked, does this affect our teaching of writing? This difference is the same as differences based on race, class, gender that we’ve spent years addressing. Chandler drew on an example from last year’s Cs. She attended a panel on remixing as writing where the panelists showed that students see remixing as standard. Some audience members, however, was concerned about plagiarism and argued that patchwriting is not remixing. The panelists stood their ground, arguing remixing = writing, while Chandler was left agreeing with both sides. Ultimately she argued that we need to re-imagine what constitutes the writing process. Often times our reactions (as illustrated by the reactions of last year’s audience members) are material world reactions where economy is based on scarcity, but, as Chandler points out, the information is economy is not – where the more something is used/circulated, the more it is worth. We need to reassess our view of the writing process based on our use of new media literacy.
Student 1- Mike Rubino presented on multiple-authored blogs and collaborating in academic environments. He pointed out differences between academic discussion blogs, which seek to toss around various ideas on a shared topic and focused message blogs, which have a singular message they want to get across to the readers.
Student 2- Matthew Harabin presented ways to teach with EBay in order to develop students’ analytical and critical thinking skills.
Student 3- Amanda Cochran studied blog desertion, focusing specifically on why college students desert their blogs. She argued that this is not a “bad” thing, that it actually shows a “wising up” of these students, as they take in horror stories about bloggers who end up being punished (lost jobs, incarceration—such as the Egyptian blogger arrested over his critiques of religion, etc.) over something they’ve written. Students also showed concern over their blogs being inaccurate representations of their writing skills. This “moving on” she argued is a positive representation of students’ understanding of new media. She described students “moving on” to “gated communities” like Facebook and MySpace.
I guess I don’t see MySpace or Facebook (though I have never used the latter) as “gated communities” per se. Anyone has access to them, and there is ample information about the possibility of losing jobs (or not getting hired for one) on account of a myspace profile. Now I am not weighing in on the controversy here over whether or not this is fair or an invasion of privacy or what kind of “space” (public or otherwise) that myspace might be. I’m just not sure that a “moving on” to myspace or Facebook can accurately be described as a “wising up”, but I found the topic of blog desertion interesting. A couple of audience members described it maybe not as desertion per se, but rather as a kind of moving on. I also wasn’t entirely clear on Amanda’s distinctions between academic and social blogging. Isn’t all blogging supposed to be social?
Student 4 – Nadia Lahens presented on fan fiction and entertained the audience with a quote taken from Anne Rice’s website: “I do not allow fan fiction….” Rice goes on to say that writers of fan fiction must obey her wishes (I don’t have the exact quote for this).
During the discussion one audience member mentioned that we all laughed at Rice’s comment, but that to some extent her comment is understandable – that we are all somewhat protective of our own work. I personally laughed at Rice’s comment because it’s not as if Anne Rice created the vampire story herself. Her lack of recognition of her own “remixing,” her own version of fan fiction, is what made me laugh (an annoyed kind of laughter...more like a grunt, I guess).
Finally, Sally Chandler presented on youth culture in the (composition) classroom with a focus on remixing and its reliance on parody. She discussed the differences between digital and material space: digital space is immersive, interactive, symbol mediated, and information intensive. The mindset is or has to be different when working in a digital space as compared to material space. How, she asked, does this affect our teaching of writing? This difference is the same as differences based on race, class, gender that we’ve spent years addressing. Chandler drew on an example from last year’s Cs. She attended a panel on remixing as writing where the panelists showed that students see remixing as standard. Some audience members, however, was concerned about plagiarism and argued that patchwriting is not remixing. The panelists stood their ground, arguing remixing = writing, while Chandler was left agreeing with both sides. Ultimately she argued that we need to re-imagine what constitutes the writing process. Often times our reactions (as illustrated by the reactions of last year’s audience members) are material world reactions where economy is based on scarcity, but, as Chandler points out, the information is economy is not – where the more something is used/circulated, the more it is worth. We need to reassess our view of the writing process based on our use of new media literacy.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
CCCC07: Outtake One
My lovely traveling partner for this year's conference, Megan, was, very unfortunately, too sick to go. This is really much more unfortunate for her, having to deal with a long-lasting and hard-hitting cold/sinus infection, than it was for me, though having her there would have been wonderful.
My first night there, I checked into my hotel, got settled into "my pod," and checked out the little French restaurant/wine bar next door. I dined alone -- a glass of wine, some tomatoes and basil on French bread, and a salad. I was the only person in the crowded (people were waiting for tables) place who was alone. Next to me was a group of four women. They were having a great time, their volume rising with each glass of wine. They clapped and cheered loudly for themselves when at one point they decided to order yet another bottle. Toward the end of my meal, a couple of them leaned over to me and said, "We are *so* impressed with you." I wasn't sure what they meant exactly, but they explained to me that only one of the group of four ever had the "guts" to dine alone, and she had been encouraging the other women to try it. I mentioned that my traveling partner had gotten sick, and we struck up conversation. They inquired into the reasons for my NYC trip, and I tried to explain the conference. "Is that like writing?" they inquired. Somehow we got on the topic of the Food Network, a shared TV addiction. Eventually the conversation returned to dining alone. I mentioned reading many articles about the possibilities involved in dining (and doing other public ventures) alone, as people are more likely to approach you, etc. They agreed, and said, "Yeah, like we approached you." Then they made some sort of joke about a lot of good that does you...unless you're a lesbian, and they broke into hysterical laughter. For any reader who doesn't already know, I am indeed, a lesbian. But, did I have the courage to speak up and say something? Did I respond with, "actually, I am a lesbian." No. Did I mention, that it has never really been a dream of mine to be approached by four straight women in a pretentious little French wine bar in NYC? No. Did I happen to express to them that most lesbians would be a bit unfazed by four straight women? That in fact, what I noticed most were the few topics of conversation we could share -- TV, food, work, etc.--not the fact that they were women and I am a lesbian. No. No, instead I laughed lightly and shifted the conversation. And went back to my "pod" and slept on the fact that while I had the "guts" to dine alone, I didn't have the courage to speak up for myself.
My first night there, I checked into my hotel, got settled into "my pod," and checked out the little French restaurant/wine bar next door. I dined alone -- a glass of wine, some tomatoes and basil on French bread, and a salad. I was the only person in the crowded (people were waiting for tables) place who was alone. Next to me was a group of four women. They were having a great time, their volume rising with each glass of wine. They clapped and cheered loudly for themselves when at one point they decided to order yet another bottle. Toward the end of my meal, a couple of them leaned over to me and said, "We are *so* impressed with you." I wasn't sure what they meant exactly, but they explained to me that only one of the group of four ever had the "guts" to dine alone, and she had been encouraging the other women to try it. I mentioned that my traveling partner had gotten sick, and we struck up conversation. They inquired into the reasons for my NYC trip, and I tried to explain the conference. "Is that like writing?" they inquired. Somehow we got on the topic of the Food Network, a shared TV addiction. Eventually the conversation returned to dining alone. I mentioned reading many articles about the possibilities involved in dining (and doing other public ventures) alone, as people are more likely to approach you, etc. They agreed, and said, "Yeah, like we approached you." Then they made some sort of joke about a lot of good that does you...unless you're a lesbian, and they broke into hysterical laughter. For any reader who doesn't already know, I am indeed, a lesbian. But, did I have the courage to speak up and say something? Did I respond with, "actually, I am a lesbian." No. Did I mention, that it has never really been a dream of mine to be approached by four straight women in a pretentious little French wine bar in NYC? No. Did I happen to express to them that most lesbians would be a bit unfazed by four straight women? That in fact, what I noticed most were the few topics of conversation we could share -- TV, food, work, etc.--not the fact that they were women and I am a lesbian. No. No, instead I laughed lightly and shifted the conversation. And went back to my "pod" and slept on the fact that while I had the "guts" to dine alone, I didn't have the courage to speak up for myself.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
CCCC07: Day One
Disclaimer: What follows is primarily aimed at summary of the presentations that I attended at this year’s Cs. I’ve done this for a couple of reasons: 1) is to keep the arguments and insights fresh in my mind—an archive for myself and 2) is to allow those who did not attend (including those not in the field) to get a glimpse of what went on. The italicized portions that follow the summaries are my reflective thoughts and/or questions regarding what I heard. If I’ve misrepresented anyone, please “speak”-up and let me know; it was certainly not intentional. Of course many of the presenters have their own blogs with more nuanced descriptions of what they presented (if the not the presentation itself), and I’ve tried to note that as well.
The first session I attended (Thursday morning) was “3Cs: Capitalism, Commodification, and Consumerism”:
Mike Edwards presented his paper, which covered an alternative discourse of the economic – one that doesn’t always assume scarcity, that doesn’t necessarily doesn’t look at the working class (student) as some kind of victim of capitalism, one that doesn’t assume all transactions are inherently capitalist transactions. He argued that working class (student) identities tend to be constituted by lack with the pedagogical adjustment generally being access (either to technology or even manners), but he presented the idea that the remedy is not just the handing out of resources; students need skills to utilize these resources. He turned to Resnick and Wolff’s conception of class as an economic process of appropriating value and looked at the ways that “use” and “appropriation” can be seen differently than in a strictly capitalist sense (for example, “use” of reading text could be for getting things done, learning, or appropriation and remix into new texts). He pointed out that digital technologies can facilitate these processes. In the third part of his presentation he presented the way that information goods take on more value as they circulate and that the networked writings of our students can do just that. Finally, he showed (literally, via a nice little powerpoint chart) the way that capitalism is: transaction always = market; labor always = wage; and enterprise always = capitalist (okay, his chart makes this much more clear); he turned to Gibson-Graham for an alternative: market as fair trade, for example; labor/wage as self employed, for example; and capitalist enterprise as state. In other words, nonmarket, unpaid, noncapitalist, but all economic activities.
Next up was Sean Murray who presented on the infiltration of capitalism/commercial culture into our lives and classrooms, and in particular on his concern with the ways in which the commercial world has commodified our identities. Sean is interested in a pedagogy that has students read the way in which their identities are influenced by corporate power. He then wants to link those readings of the point at which self and culture meet to social injustice on a large scale. He situates composition as being in a unique position of both plugging into that corporate culture but also being a site of resistance. He ended by expressing his reservations about such a pedagogy, which included his concern over implementing a simplistic, naïve (his words, not mine) narrative of unveiling “truths” with the goal of an alleged freedom (“the truth will set you free”); his awareness of pushing an (blatant anti-consumerism) agenda on students; and his fear that he is interfering with what Bill Readings calls Thought (with a capital T), which views T/thought as a question not an answer.
Finally, Dr. Lonni Pearce did a Marxist influenced reading of Working Assets as an example of a “socially responsible” company. She pointed out the conflict and tension between politics and consumption evident from the company’s website and marketing materials – a tension between the motives of capitalism (you can shop, talk, etc. and…) and the company’s representation as a political action group (…and save the world!).
At the start of his presentation, Mike situated himself as “a big fat Marxist.” I am wondering how his use of Gibson-Graham, Resnick, and Wolff can reconcile with that positioning or label. I think many Marxists might disagree.
Sean named many common reservations that get expressed concerning critical/radical/liberatory pedagogies. They’re certainly similar to reservations I sometimes have regarding my own pedagogies and my own “agenda” (and subsequent fears of “pushing it”). Sean’s presentation left me with a number of questions – the biggest one being, how specifically he makes the leap from these personal readings of self as influenced by corporate capitalism to issues of social injustice. To make this move seems to me to require a kind of pushing of the agenda on students. And, what issues is he specifically looking at on a more global scale? I’m also curious to know what experiences he’s had in terms of students who are well aware of their construction by media and commercialism--the students who are aware of the implications of their graphic tees and choose to make those purchases, construct themselves in these commercialized ways. Many students seem to be okay with this role. Sean did point to all of this in his conclusion, but I’m just wondering then how he deals with these reservations.
The next session was on plagiarism:
Clancy Ratliff gave a very engaging and entertaining presentation of plagiarism in the blogosphere. She presented anecdotes on bloggers having been plagiarized – the most hilarious ones having been her own (that is, her writing/blog being plagiarized, not her as plagiarist!). Her interest ultimately turned to copyscape an online service that helps authors detect whether or not their material has been copied (or quoted) elsewhere on the web. Clancy argued that ethically Copyscape is different than turnitin because with copyscape the author is actually paying the service to “defend” (copyscape’s word choice) his or her written material, intellectual labor, etc; whereas with turnitin there is often (arguably) coercion of students involved, turnitin makes money on these student texts, the students don’t see any of that money etc. Clancy would like to do a larger and more careful analysis of copyscape. She also pointed out that institutional views of plagiarism extend into the blogosphere (she had rather clear examples illustrating this, which can be found in her posting on her presentation).
Next was Rebecca Moore Howard who continued her work in looking at the rhetoric used to describe plagiarism and plagiarists. For this presentation she focused specifically on the rhetoric (specifically tropes/metaphors) used to describe plagiarism as it happens in the blogosphere (and compared it, at times, to the metaphors used for print plagiarism). She wondered, in approaching the project, whether or not people online are thinking differently about plagiarism. Apparently the answer is not really. Howard showed examples of blogs discussing the topic of plagiarism in terms of policing, crime, “assumed guilt,” cases, vampirism (yes, one site actually describes plagiarists as textual vampires, sucking blood and life), hunting (in which case the teacher/reader was the “hunter”, thereby making the student “prey”…and what happens in this scenario, Howard, asked…), and the metaphor of wearing ones dirty/used underwear. A couple of the sites she described treated plagiarism as crime that needs a team of investigators to investigate it (here she gave credit to a research assistant who made the connection to CSI culture). She pointed out the way that this discourse creates on online environment of vigilante culture.
One of the sessions I most looked forward to was on the global economy and class identity. The presenters were Min Zhan Lu, Tom Fox, and Joseph Harris with Bruce Horner as respondent.
Lu made the argument that given the globalizing of the free market we need to rethink class, and in doing so we need to rethink the way(s) in which we respond to our students’ careerist desires. In redefining class, Lu focused on class as bodily interaction and class as a matter of space. She noted that for those holding power territorial markers matter less and less; that class division has become the unequal distribution of extraterritorial mobility. She suggested approaching matters of class from simultaneously a local and global perspective and designing a pedagogy that enables students to acquire the specialized skills of the “new” global perspective. One route she described was a writing project that focuses on the tension between the socially constructed desire to chase supra-mobility and the more localized work sites of those who are bound by family and other factors. This writing project could detail the role of the globe trotter as depicted by mass media and ask questions of our (students) own globe trotting (or not) desires and tendencies.
Tom Fox gave a lively and impassioned presentation on the evils of textbook companies and subsequently textbook adoption (as made by committees, districts, policy makers etc). He informed us with alarm, “Companies huger than my imagination own education.” He drew the lines between arms fairs, textbook companies, education (including professional development). His suggestions: work in organized groups to empower teachers; continue to engage in a Rhetorical War of Positions on textbook adoption. He ended, “Corporate reform of education is coming to your campus soon.” (If it hasn’t already).
Joseph Harris presented on his own institution, Duke, and its recent controversy over the lacrosse team. He focused on one aspect of the situation and that was a signing of “Listening Statement” by 88 Duke faculty members who came to be both known and attacked as the Group of 88. At the heart of the criticism was the idea that faculty should not dare to criticize the culture of their own institution, that a faculty’s place is in the classroom (and only there), the assumption that faculty shouldn’t comment on the lives of students that don’t affect them. His suggestion: do study campus culture and invite ways of improving it.
I've run out of steam here in terms or recording some of my reactions, thoughts, questions, and I still have to get down day two, plus some "outtakes" from my adventure in NYC. More on all of that later....
---
update: Mike has blogged on his presentation, as well as on some of the same sessions I've summarized above.
The first session I attended (Thursday morning) was “3Cs: Capitalism, Commodification, and Consumerism”:
Mike Edwards presented his paper, which covered an alternative discourse of the economic – one that doesn’t always assume scarcity, that doesn’t necessarily doesn’t look at the working class (student) as some kind of victim of capitalism, one that doesn’t assume all transactions are inherently capitalist transactions. He argued that working class (student) identities tend to be constituted by lack with the pedagogical adjustment generally being access (either to technology or even manners), but he presented the idea that the remedy is not just the handing out of resources; students need skills to utilize these resources. He turned to Resnick and Wolff’s conception of class as an economic process of appropriating value and looked at the ways that “use” and “appropriation” can be seen differently than in a strictly capitalist sense (for example, “use” of reading text could be for getting things done, learning, or appropriation and remix into new texts). He pointed out that digital technologies can facilitate these processes. In the third part of his presentation he presented the way that information goods take on more value as they circulate and that the networked writings of our students can do just that. Finally, he showed (literally, via a nice little powerpoint chart) the way that capitalism is: transaction always = market; labor always = wage; and enterprise always = capitalist (okay, his chart makes this much more clear); he turned to Gibson-Graham for an alternative: market as fair trade, for example; labor/wage as self employed, for example; and capitalist enterprise as state. In other words, nonmarket, unpaid, noncapitalist, but all economic activities.
Next up was Sean Murray who presented on the infiltration of capitalism/commercial culture into our lives and classrooms, and in particular on his concern with the ways in which the commercial world has commodified our identities. Sean is interested in a pedagogy that has students read the way in which their identities are influenced by corporate power. He then wants to link those readings of the point at which self and culture meet to social injustice on a large scale. He situates composition as being in a unique position of both plugging into that corporate culture but also being a site of resistance. He ended by expressing his reservations about such a pedagogy, which included his concern over implementing a simplistic, naïve (his words, not mine) narrative of unveiling “truths” with the goal of an alleged freedom (“the truth will set you free”); his awareness of pushing an (blatant anti-consumerism) agenda on students; and his fear that he is interfering with what Bill Readings calls Thought (with a capital T), which views T/thought as a question not an answer.
Finally, Dr. Lonni Pearce did a Marxist influenced reading of Working Assets as an example of a “socially responsible” company. She pointed out the conflict and tension between politics and consumption evident from the company’s website and marketing materials – a tension between the motives of capitalism (you can shop, talk, etc. and…) and the company’s representation as a political action group (…and save the world!).
At the start of his presentation, Mike situated himself as “a big fat Marxist.” I am wondering how his use of Gibson-Graham, Resnick, and Wolff can reconcile with that positioning or label. I think many Marxists might disagree.
Sean named many common reservations that get expressed concerning critical/radical/liberatory pedagogies. They’re certainly similar to reservations I sometimes have regarding my own pedagogies and my own “agenda” (and subsequent fears of “pushing it”). Sean’s presentation left me with a number of questions – the biggest one being, how specifically he makes the leap from these personal readings of self as influenced by corporate capitalism to issues of social injustice. To make this move seems to me to require a kind of pushing of the agenda on students. And, what issues is he specifically looking at on a more global scale? I’m also curious to know what experiences he’s had in terms of students who are well aware of their construction by media and commercialism--the students who are aware of the implications of their graphic tees and choose to make those purchases, construct themselves in these commercialized ways. Many students seem to be okay with this role. Sean did point to all of this in his conclusion, but I’m just wondering then how he deals with these reservations.
The next session was on plagiarism:
Clancy Ratliff gave a very engaging and entertaining presentation of plagiarism in the blogosphere. She presented anecdotes on bloggers having been plagiarized – the most hilarious ones having been her own (that is, her writing/blog being plagiarized, not her as plagiarist!). Her interest ultimately turned to copyscape an online service that helps authors detect whether or not their material has been copied (or quoted) elsewhere on the web. Clancy argued that ethically Copyscape is different than turnitin because with copyscape the author is actually paying the service to “defend” (copyscape’s word choice) his or her written material, intellectual labor, etc; whereas with turnitin there is often (arguably) coercion of students involved, turnitin makes money on these student texts, the students don’t see any of that money etc. Clancy would like to do a larger and more careful analysis of copyscape. She also pointed out that institutional views of plagiarism extend into the blogosphere (she had rather clear examples illustrating this, which can be found in her posting on her presentation).
Next was Rebecca Moore Howard who continued her work in looking at the rhetoric used to describe plagiarism and plagiarists. For this presentation she focused specifically on the rhetoric (specifically tropes/metaphors) used to describe plagiarism as it happens in the blogosphere (and compared it, at times, to the metaphors used for print plagiarism). She wondered, in approaching the project, whether or not people online are thinking differently about plagiarism. Apparently the answer is not really. Howard showed examples of blogs discussing the topic of plagiarism in terms of policing, crime, “assumed guilt,” cases, vampirism (yes, one site actually describes plagiarists as textual vampires, sucking blood and life), hunting (in which case the teacher/reader was the “hunter”, thereby making the student “prey”…and what happens in this scenario, Howard, asked…), and the metaphor of wearing ones dirty/used underwear. A couple of the sites she described treated plagiarism as crime that needs a team of investigators to investigate it (here she gave credit to a research assistant who made the connection to CSI culture). She pointed out the way that this discourse creates on online environment of vigilante culture.
One of the sessions I most looked forward to was on the global economy and class identity. The presenters were Min Zhan Lu, Tom Fox, and Joseph Harris with Bruce Horner as respondent.
Lu made the argument that given the globalizing of the free market we need to rethink class, and in doing so we need to rethink the way(s) in which we respond to our students’ careerist desires. In redefining class, Lu focused on class as bodily interaction and class as a matter of space. She noted that for those holding power territorial markers matter less and less; that class division has become the unequal distribution of extraterritorial mobility. She suggested approaching matters of class from simultaneously a local and global perspective and designing a pedagogy that enables students to acquire the specialized skills of the “new” global perspective. One route she described was a writing project that focuses on the tension between the socially constructed desire to chase supra-mobility and the more localized work sites of those who are bound by family and other factors. This writing project could detail the role of the globe trotter as depicted by mass media and ask questions of our (students) own globe trotting (or not) desires and tendencies.
Tom Fox gave a lively and impassioned presentation on the evils of textbook companies and subsequently textbook adoption (as made by committees, districts, policy makers etc). He informed us with alarm, “Companies huger than my imagination own education.” He drew the lines between arms fairs, textbook companies, education (including professional development). His suggestions: work in organized groups to empower teachers; continue to engage in a Rhetorical War of Positions on textbook adoption. He ended, “Corporate reform of education is coming to your campus soon.” (If it hasn’t already).
Joseph Harris presented on his own institution, Duke, and its recent controversy over the lacrosse team. He focused on one aspect of the situation and that was a signing of “Listening Statement” by 88 Duke faculty members who came to be both known and attacked as the Group of 88. At the heart of the criticism was the idea that faculty should not dare to criticize the culture of their own institution, that a faculty’s place is in the classroom (and only there), the assumption that faculty shouldn’t comment on the lives of students that don’t affect them. His suggestion: do study campus culture and invite ways of improving it.
I've run out of steam here in terms or recording some of my reactions, thoughts, questions, and I still have to get down day two, plus some "outtakes" from my adventure in NYC. More on all of that later....
---
update: Mike has blogged on his presentation, as well as on some of the same sessions I've summarized above.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Survived: Part II
I made it through the second written exam and finished up with my oral exam on Friday. I emerged into the St. Patrick's day weekend snowstorm with some sense of relief and a big headache that lasted and lasted and lasted.
The next day I rolled out of bed and immediately started shoveling. I shoveled for an hour and a half--until it was time for my tennis match. The bubble was 101 degrees, and I ran around, with my headache, getting beat badly, while I mostly concentrated on trying to breath in the oppressive heat.
That evening D and I went out for what was supposed to be a lovely dinner at McGuire's, where we were treated terribly--or barely treated at all (maybe a better way of describing it). The food was good, but definitely did not warrant the $100.00 tab and shitty service. After that we met up with some of my wonderful friends for drinks.
Yesterday I attended the anti-war rally. Today my headache is finally gone.
The next day I rolled out of bed and immediately started shoveling. I shoveled for an hour and a half--until it was time for my tennis match. The bubble was 101 degrees, and I ran around, with my headache, getting beat badly, while I mostly concentrated on trying to breath in the oppressive heat.
That evening D and I went out for what was supposed to be a lovely dinner at McGuire's, where we were treated terribly--or barely treated at all (maybe a better way of describing it). The food was good, but definitely did not warrant the $100.00 tab and shitty service. After that we met up with some of my wonderful friends for drinks.
Yesterday I attended the anti-war rally. Today my headache is finally gone.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
survived: Part I
I (barely) made it through exam one. Here is a rundown:
What suprised me most: How *physically* grueling a process it was (though I had a friend mention this aspect to me, I had no idea how much it would affect me). Most of the three days I felt like I'd been through a tremendous workout (only worse--if that makes any sense)--my hip hurt, my legs ached, knots in my upper back into my neck, my fingers and hands ached and had pins and needles. This is NOT a body that is accustomed to sitting around for long periods of time.
The questions I answered: I answered one question on Althusser's theory of ideology and subsequent debates within cultural studies around historical materialism and ideology; and whether or not I thought anything could be garnered from Althusser for the future of cultural studies. The other question was about the role of the writing classroom within capitalism--whether or not it complicates any straightforward sense of economic determinism; in what ways it might mirror capitalist relations of production; whether there is a distinction between the space of the writing classroom and that of the university.
What I ate and drank: as much coffee and sugar as I wanted (I'm sure that really helped with the body aches and pains).
Breaks: one walk, one half hour of jeopardy, breakfast/lunch/dinner, some dishes, some laundry after cheyanne got sick on D's favorite blanket, a bit of crocheting, helping D with her puzzle (that was her exam weekend project)--I think I added a total of about six pieces (out of 1,000); one hour of L Word
What I did as soon as I clicked "send": went to the gym; came home and tried to go for a walk, but the snow squalls and wind made it really tricky; went and bought a new stove (only ours is in white, and we didn't buy it at home depot, and we didn't pay that price for it)!
The worst part: knowing I have to do it again this weekend.
What suprised me most: How *physically* grueling a process it was (though I had a friend mention this aspect to me, I had no idea how much it would affect me). Most of the three days I felt like I'd been through a tremendous workout (only worse--if that makes any sense)--my hip hurt, my legs ached, knots in my upper back into my neck, my fingers and hands ached and had pins and needles. This is NOT a body that is accustomed to sitting around for long periods of time.
The questions I answered: I answered one question on Althusser's theory of ideology and subsequent debates within cultural studies around historical materialism and ideology; and whether or not I thought anything could be garnered from Althusser for the future of cultural studies. The other question was about the role of the writing classroom within capitalism--whether or not it complicates any straightforward sense of economic determinism; in what ways it might mirror capitalist relations of production; whether there is a distinction between the space of the writing classroom and that of the university.
What I ate and drank: as much coffee and sugar as I wanted (I'm sure that really helped with the body aches and pains).
Breaks: one walk, one half hour of jeopardy, breakfast/lunch/dinner, some dishes, some laundry after cheyanne got sick on D's favorite blanket, a bit of crocheting, helping D with her puzzle (that was her exam weekend project)--I think I added a total of about six pieces (out of 1,000); one hour of L Word
What I did as soon as I clicked "send": went to the gym; came home and tried to go for a walk, but the snow squalls and wind made it really tricky; went and bought a new stove (only ours is in white, and we didn't buy it at home depot, and we didn't pay that price for it)!
The worst part: knowing I have to do it again this weekend.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
the exams are coming
and in turn my blog has been neglected.
I start my first exam on Friday (as in *this* coming Friday...as in three days from now) morning. The second exam the following Friday, and my (teleconference version of) orals on Friday, the 16th. My oral portion will be a teleconference as one of my committee members is now on faculty at a school in Texas.
It may sound crazy, but I'm not sure of the best way to "prepare" for these exams. I've mostly been busy clearing space. Taking care of NUTs (nagging unfinished tasks), grading up a storm, etc., so that when the exam questions arrive in front of me, they'll have my full attention. I can't say I'm not scared. But I'm almost beyond that point. I've thrown up my hands. There is not much more I can do.
I don't know that I'll be blogging much or doing much blog reading over the next couple of weeks, but I'll try to do brief updates after each exam. I'm sure my NetNewsWire will announce something like 2,000 unread articles and blog entries by the time I return to my "real life."
Until then....
I start my first exam on Friday (as in *this* coming Friday...as in three days from now) morning. The second exam the following Friday, and my (teleconference version of) orals on Friday, the 16th. My oral portion will be a teleconference as one of my committee members is now on faculty at a school in Texas.
It may sound crazy, but I'm not sure of the best way to "prepare" for these exams. I've mostly been busy clearing space. Taking care of NUTs (nagging unfinished tasks), grading up a storm, etc., so that when the exam questions arrive in front of me, they'll have my full attention. I can't say I'm not scared. But I'm almost beyond that point. I've thrown up my hands. There is not much more I can do.
I don't know that I'll be blogging much or doing much blog reading over the next couple of weeks, but I'll try to do brief updates after each exam. I'm sure my NetNewsWire will announce something like 2,000 unread articles and blog entries by the time I return to my "real life."
Until then....
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
What's so wrong with the word scrotum?
I don't know why I let things like this bother me so much. Cases of censorship and/or controversy over silly things crop up all the time. I try not to let them get under my skin so much, but it just infuriates me that there are people in this world who are so...so...(the least offensive, but totally nondescriptive, word that I can come up with is) clueless! I know that calling people clueless isn't terribly articulate. This is why I generally try not to respond when people get all riled up over the naming of anatomical parts. Scrotum is just a word for the skin surrounding a male's testicals. I'm not sure why, to quote Frederick Muller, a middle school librarian, “If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that.” Why is that so difficult to explain? Or as Andrea Koch, the librarian at French Road Elementary School in Brighton, N.Y., puts it, “I don’t think our teachers, or myself, want to do that vocabulary lesson,” she said in an interview. And why is that? Because we'd rather have nine, ten, and eleven year olds referring to their body parts by other names? These reactions just get so lost on me. And I'm irritable as it is. I just had to sit hear and watch the evening news while reader after reader (well, I'm using the term "reader" lightly as they didn't read the whole book just the one passage) recoiled at the word scrotum.
Okay, well here is a much more carefully stated and well thought out response to the lunacy.
Okay, well here is a much more carefully stated and well thought out response to the lunacy.
Friday, February 16, 2007
there's hope for me yet!
Today I met with a member of my committee who agreed to help me with what at first seemed a potentially overwhelming idea to create a survey for faculty and students regarding use of proprietary software. The logistics still seem a bit overwhelming, but the support will help a lot. The results will become part of my third chapter addressing proprietary software as clearly representative of the corporatization of the University. Not only did she help me with that, we just had some really productive conversation and brainstorming around my project that helped to clarify pieces of it for both us (I think; I hope). In addition(!), I’ve completed more than the asked for number of exam questions. Not only that(!)—but I’ve completed them before the agreed upon send-out to committee date set by my chair. Granted I still need to spend tomorrow going back over them, tweaking and such. I also still want to get a question in there that addresses the difficulty of a strictly materialist theory in a classroom that is devoted to creating the written word, which then, undeniably (at least in mind) needs to be treated as material. Discourse as material. Somehow I need to work in a question that deals with these issues around discursivity and materiality (and their seeming or alleged inability to meet).
Other than that, I feel like I might be coming down with some dreaded cold or flu type thing. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into anything as I have a “big” poker game scheduled for tomorrow night. Or maybe I’m just exhausted from the exhilarating nature of my day. Let’s hope.
Other than that, I feel like I might be coming down with some dreaded cold or flu type thing. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into anything as I have a “big” poker game scheduled for tomorrow night. Or maybe I’m just exhausted from the exhilarating nature of my day. Let’s hope.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
snow day
I thought to opt for a more creative title for this post, as I am quite certain that thousands of other bloggers share that headline with my today, but I decided nothing could be more appropriate than that.
As promised today I will blog about my profession -- what I *love* about it that is. <3 It that even right? Is that the little heart symbol / emoticon that I see my students make? It looks funny. I think I did it wrong. Okay, well, I love that as part of my profession I learn crazy little emoticons from my students as they attempt to add inflection and clarify meaning in blog posts and e-mails.
Of course, the obvious...I love snow days (rare as they are).
I love when students ask me for recommendation letters. This is fresh on my mind, as I've had two students from last semester recently ask me for recommendation letters. Although it is work to write these letters, I love the fact that my students recognize the fact that they succeeded and the fact that they recognize my recognition of their success. Okay -- the less wordy version -- my students know that I'm proud of them and endlessly impressed with them, and I'm glad that they know that.
I love having interesting and lively classroom conversations with a group of saavy (often young, but not always) folk. They know so many things that I don't know. Sometimes I joke and say that their blogs are my link to the outside world...only I'm not really joking.
I love that when I curl up in the big chair in our living/bedroom (don't ask) with a cup of coffee and a book I am getting paid for that work. What a deal!
I love walking college campuses. There is an energy about most schools that I've been at -- an energy that translates into collective curiousity about the world (or at least that is how it feels when I'm walking across campus watching the bustle of briefcases and bookbags).
I love having access to multiple libraries and online databases.
I love being around like-minded people and being in a place where I can talk to (in a generally civilized manner) the ones who don't think like me, and if all goes well, we both come away with something new to think about.
In all honesty -- it is actually a little painful for me to get this mushy and idealistic -- even if that was the whole point. I want to go back to #2 on the list -- the snow day. Here is what I do NOT like about snow days. On snow days I feel like I'm going to get tons of work done. I'll be all caught up on grading AND have crafted some exam questions by the day's end. This is what I think going into it. But instead, I sit down to work and have to get up and shovel. Sit down to work and need to put more coffee on. Sit down to work and have to get up to go to the bathroom because I've had soooo much coffee, hot chocolate, and tea all day.
D stayed home from work today, and we were out every hour or two shoveling and snow blowing. Actually, she has been out a total of four times today, and I've only been out twice. AND, she did go around the neighborhood helping out the neighbors with her snowblower -- because that is the type of girl she is. But I did keep the coffee coming, and I made oatmeal muffins. I also went out in the backyard this morning and made a giant heart in the snow as a happy valentine's message for D. Of course by noon there was no longer a trace of it. All in all, I've done the baking and hot drink drinking and shoveling and snow playing that one is supposed to do on a snow day, but my work hasn't exactly progressed the way I'd envisioned. So that is my issue with snow days -- they create an illusion of extra time.
As promised today I will blog about my profession -- what I *love* about it that is. <3 It that even right? Is that the little heart symbol / emoticon that I see my students make? It looks funny. I think I did it wrong. Okay, well, I love that as part of my profession I learn crazy little emoticons from my students as they attempt to add inflection and clarify meaning in blog posts and e-mails.
Of course, the obvious...I love snow days (rare as they are).
I love when students ask me for recommendation letters. This is fresh on my mind, as I've had two students from last semester recently ask me for recommendation letters. Although it is work to write these letters, I love the fact that my students recognize the fact that they succeeded and the fact that they recognize my recognition of their success. Okay -- the less wordy version -- my students know that I'm proud of them and endlessly impressed with them, and I'm glad that they know that.
I love having interesting and lively classroom conversations with a group of saavy (often young, but not always) folk. They know so many things that I don't know. Sometimes I joke and say that their blogs are my link to the outside world...only I'm not really joking.
I love that when I curl up in the big chair in our living/bedroom (don't ask) with a cup of coffee and a book I am getting paid for that work. What a deal!
I love walking college campuses. There is an energy about most schools that I've been at -- an energy that translates into collective curiousity about the world (or at least that is how it feels when I'm walking across campus watching the bustle of briefcases and bookbags).
I love having access to multiple libraries and online databases.
I love being around like-minded people and being in a place where I can talk to (in a generally civilized manner) the ones who don't think like me, and if all goes well, we both come away with something new to think about.
In all honesty -- it is actually a little painful for me to get this mushy and idealistic -- even if that was the whole point. I want to go back to #2 on the list -- the snow day. Here is what I do NOT like about snow days. On snow days I feel like I'm going to get tons of work done. I'll be all caught up on grading AND have crafted some exam questions by the day's end. This is what I think going into it. But instead, I sit down to work and have to get up and shovel. Sit down to work and need to put more coffee on. Sit down to work and have to get up to go to the bathroom because I've had soooo much coffee, hot chocolate, and tea all day.
D stayed home from work today, and we were out every hour or two shoveling and snow blowing. Actually, she has been out a total of four times today, and I've only been out twice. AND, she did go around the neighborhood helping out the neighbors with her snowblower -- because that is the type of girl she is. But I did keep the coffee coming, and I made oatmeal muffins. I also went out in the backyard this morning and made a giant heart in the snow as a happy valentine's message for D. Of course by noon there was no longer a trace of it. All in all, I've done the baking and hot drink drinking and shoveling and snow playing that one is supposed to do on a snow day, but my work hasn't exactly progressed the way I'd envisioned. So that is my issue with snow days -- they create an illusion of extra time.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Presentation on uses of RSS in the classroom
Today I am presenting for the Provisions series at CSR -- a lunch time series for faculty to come together and discuss pedagogy. Today's theme is "teaching with technology." Here is what I'll be offering:
Using RSS in the classroom
RSS: Real(ly) Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary = a webfeed delivered as an XML file to an aggregator or feed collector / reader.
General Benefits (for education):
➢ Organizing and streamlining the abundance of content on the web.
➢ Allowing for an approach to reading the combines both scanning (picking out interesting and relevant materials) and synthesizing (making connections between the relevant and interesting materials).
➢ Developing reading skills important for both our students and ourselves as we all become more inundated with information.
➢ Gives students the opportunity to evaluate and weed out content on the web.
For Students
• It stays much more current than a textbook: Students can subscribe to topic-specific sites that relate to the course, allowing them to stay aware of recent developments in the field. These feeds can help them with research (both finding topics and finding further information). Students can also contribute to the collection of feeds by seeking out relevant sites on the web and sharing these feeds with the class.
• Ease of reading and commenting on peers’ blogs: In a class that uses blogs, RSS can make more efficient the exchange of ideas and knowledge that makes blogs a worthwhile pedagogical tool in the first place. Students can subscribe to the blogs of their classmates and easily see when they’ve been updated.
• Think differently about writing for a digital world. Using RSS in a classroom where students are writing for the web offers the opportunity for students to think about how to craft writing that might be delivered and initially read in the form of a news feed (ofton only a headline and brief “blurb”).
For Educators
• Making announcements: Do you always remember something after class that you wanted to say during class? Keep a class blog site for announcements and assignments. Every time you update it, students will be able to view the update via their RSS aggregators.
• Reading students’ blogs: In a blogging classroom, RSS eliminates the need to go to each individual student blog; instead, they come to you. You can read through students’ blogs in half the time. You can also use RSS to keep track of comments left on student blog posts.
• Get updates on the latest news in your field: Google (news.google.com) or yahoo (news.yahoo.com) news advanced search will give you a feed to subscribe to that will update your reader whenever your search topic has new articles locatable on the web.
• Combine with a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us to create feeds for specific tags. If you create a unique tag for a specific class, then any bookmarks you (or anybody) adds with that tag will be automatically fed to both your RSS reader and your students’.
Readers:
Bloglines
NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite
Google Reader
RSS Owl
Flock
Blogbridge
Resources:
• Blogs for Learning article by David Parry: “The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is Crucial for a Blogging Classroom”
• Will Richardson’s online guide to RSS: “RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators”; and his blog Weblogg-ed; and his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms Corwin Press, 2006.
• Wikipedia entries on RSS and web feed
Just added....
O'Reilly's XML and RSS page
From teachinghacks.com -- RSS ideas in Education
For a great non-technical explanation: "How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way"
Using RSS in the classroom
RSS: Real(ly) Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary = a webfeed delivered as an XML file to an aggregator or feed collector / reader.
General Benefits (for education):
➢ Organizing and streamlining the abundance of content on the web.
➢ Allowing for an approach to reading the combines both scanning (picking out interesting and relevant materials) and synthesizing (making connections between the relevant and interesting materials).
➢ Developing reading skills important for both our students and ourselves as we all become more inundated with information.
➢ Gives students the opportunity to evaluate and weed out content on the web.
For Students
• It stays much more current than a textbook: Students can subscribe to topic-specific sites that relate to the course, allowing them to stay aware of recent developments in the field. These feeds can help them with research (both finding topics and finding further information). Students can also contribute to the collection of feeds by seeking out relevant sites on the web and sharing these feeds with the class.
• Ease of reading and commenting on peers’ blogs: In a class that uses blogs, RSS can make more efficient the exchange of ideas and knowledge that makes blogs a worthwhile pedagogical tool in the first place. Students can subscribe to the blogs of their classmates and easily see when they’ve been updated.
• Think differently about writing for a digital world. Using RSS in a classroom where students are writing for the web offers the opportunity for students to think about how to craft writing that might be delivered and initially read in the form of a news feed (ofton only a headline and brief “blurb”).
For Educators
• Making announcements: Do you always remember something after class that you wanted to say during class? Keep a class blog site for announcements and assignments. Every time you update it, students will be able to view the update via their RSS aggregators.
• Reading students’ blogs: In a blogging classroom, RSS eliminates the need to go to each individual student blog; instead, they come to you. You can read through students’ blogs in half the time. You can also use RSS to keep track of comments left on student blog posts.
• Get updates on the latest news in your field: Google (news.google.com) or yahoo (news.yahoo.com) news advanced search will give you a feed to subscribe to that will update your reader whenever your search topic has new articles locatable on the web.
• Combine with a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us to create feeds for specific tags. If you create a unique tag for a specific class, then any bookmarks you (or anybody) adds with that tag will be automatically fed to both your RSS reader and your students’.
Readers:
Bloglines
NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite
Google Reader
RSS Owl
Flock
Blogbridge
Resources:
• Blogs for Learning article by David Parry: “The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is Crucial for a Blogging Classroom”
• Will Richardson’s online guide to RSS: “RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators”; and his blog Weblogg-ed; and his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms Corwin Press, 2006.
• Wikipedia entries on RSS and web feed
Just added....
O'Reilly's XML and RSS page
From teachinghacks.com -- RSS ideas in Education
For a great non-technical explanation: "How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way"
Monday, February 12, 2007
more exam questions
Today D took the day off from work and cleaned the entire house. I tried my best to be okay with it and focus on working while she cleaned -- even though it is VERY VERY difficult for me to let her do stuff around the house without helping out. In fact, she's still cleaning the house now. Still, I've cleaned the house numerous times, so I'm trying to rationalize that it is okay this time for me to simply focus on getting work done -- not that I've achieved a whole lot.
I finished up writing questions for exam/list one (cultural studies and critical pedagogy). I have four full questions, which is what my director asked for, but I have the skeleton of two additional questions, which I want to return to and complete because I don't know that I was quite "spot on" with the first two.
Then it came time to begin tackling exam/list two (composition). Now this second list on comp theory is really the list that I am most "into" or interested in, yet I got stuck in such a rut when trying to craft questions. I have only one so far (lovely evidence of an entire day's worth of work), and it asks too many questions, but I'm not sure which one I want to get at:
1. There is an abundance of material out there on composition or the writing classroom’s disciplinary and normalizing functions; its role of turning students into “workers who are ‘compatible with the work environment’…” (“Cults of Culture” Hurlbert and Blitz 11); and its “gatekeeping” function. Sharon Crowley addresses this in her book Composition in the University and C. Mark Hurlbert and Michael Blitz as well in their essay “Cults of Culture” and in their edited collection, Composition and Resistance. In that collection, James Berlin states that in his effort, with a group of Purdue colleagues, to create a cultural studies writing course their primary goal is “to make students aware of the cultural codes – the various competing discourses – that attempt to influence who they are. Our larger purpose is to encourage our students to resist and to negotiate these codes – these hegemonic discourses – in order to bring about more personally humane and socially equitable economic and political arrangements” (“Composition and Cultural Studies” 50). In the same collection, Stephen North responds to Berlin (and to the ideas of cultural studies and critical pedagogy in general) by saying that he can’t and won’t “use this language of the Left…” (135). In doing so, he seems to help draw this divide within composition between Left and Right (obviously) and, therefore, between the discourse of current-traditional theories of composition and more recent moves to critical teaching, radical pedagogy and resistance. One of the points that Hurlbert and Blitz make in “Cults of Culture” is the way in which these debates surrounding the introduction of cultural critique into the writing classroom get played out in a type of “two-party” system, and thereby “reif[ies] one of the great failures of United States culture” (14). In a similar response to the teaching of resistance as pedagogical move, Joe Marshall Hardin notes that both views (the acculturation and normalization of students versus the liberalization and radicalization of them) “serve as two side of the same coin” (107). What kind of language or discourse might these two (supposed) sides share? What are the difficulties involved in an emancipatory classroom discourse that relies on the “illusion” of a “dichotomic dimension” (Laclau qtd. in Hardin 107) in order to operate? How might pedagogues who offer an alternative to oppositional discourses or pedagogies of resistance speak to what Bill Readings terms a community of dissensus, which "would seek to make its heteronomy, its differences, more complex. To put this another way, such a community would have to be understood on the model of dependency rather than emancipation" (University in Ruins190)?
So, it still needs some tweaking, but at least momentum is on my side (hopefully).
I finished up writing questions for exam/list one (cultural studies and critical pedagogy). I have four full questions, which is what my director asked for, but I have the skeleton of two additional questions, which I want to return to and complete because I don't know that I was quite "spot on" with the first two.
Then it came time to begin tackling exam/list two (composition). Now this second list on comp theory is really the list that I am most "into" or interested in, yet I got stuck in such a rut when trying to craft questions. I have only one so far (lovely evidence of an entire day's worth of work), and it asks too many questions, but I'm not sure which one I want to get at:
1. There is an abundance of material out there on composition or the writing classroom’s disciplinary and normalizing functions; its role of turning students into “workers who are ‘compatible with the work environment’…” (“Cults of Culture” Hurlbert and Blitz 11); and its “gatekeeping” function. Sharon Crowley addresses this in her book Composition in the University and C. Mark Hurlbert and Michael Blitz as well in their essay “Cults of Culture” and in their edited collection, Composition and Resistance. In that collection, James Berlin states that in his effort, with a group of Purdue colleagues, to create a cultural studies writing course their primary goal is “to make students aware of the cultural codes – the various competing discourses – that attempt to influence who they are. Our larger purpose is to encourage our students to resist and to negotiate these codes – these hegemonic discourses – in order to bring about more personally humane and socially equitable economic and political arrangements” (“Composition and Cultural Studies” 50). In the same collection, Stephen North responds to Berlin (and to the ideas of cultural studies and critical pedagogy in general) by saying that he can’t and won’t “use this language of the Left…” (135). In doing so, he seems to help draw this divide within composition between Left and Right (obviously) and, therefore, between the discourse of current-traditional theories of composition and more recent moves to critical teaching, radical pedagogy and resistance. One of the points that Hurlbert and Blitz make in “Cults of Culture” is the way in which these debates surrounding the introduction of cultural critique into the writing classroom get played out in a type of “two-party” system, and thereby “reif[ies] one of the great failures of United States culture” (14). In a similar response to the teaching of resistance as pedagogical move, Joe Marshall Hardin notes that both views (the acculturation and normalization of students versus the liberalization and radicalization of them) “serve as two side of the same coin” (107). What kind of language or discourse might these two (supposed) sides share? What are the difficulties involved in an emancipatory classroom discourse that relies on the “illusion” of a “dichotomic dimension” (Laclau qtd. in Hardin 107) in order to operate? How might pedagogues who offer an alternative to oppositional discourses or pedagogies of resistance speak to what Bill Readings terms a community of dissensus, which "would seek to make its heteronomy, its differences, more complex. To put this another way, such a community would have to be understood on the model of dependency rather than emancipation" (University in Ruins190)?
So, it still needs some tweaking, but at least momentum is on my side (hopefully).
Friday, February 09, 2007
calling all women academics
Please consider posting (or simply just writing down or sharing with a friend or...) what you love about your profession as a part of happy woman professor day -- Feb. 14th!!! (via d. hawee's blog)
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
two questions
My committee has asked for my participation in creating (my own) exam questions. It may not seem like it, but it is a pretty intense process. The questions have taken me well over an hour (each) to craft. I'm not yet sure if I'm on the right track in terms of what they are looking for, but here is what I have so far:
1. "Althusser's Marxism is in the last analysis a reductionism, where ideology plays the role that the theory of mediations plays to Hegelian Marxism" (Aronowitz, The Crisis in Historical Materialism 161). For Althusser there is no practice except by and “in” ideology: “what thus seems to take place outside ideology…in reality takes place in ideology” (“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” 175). So it can be said that for Althusser the “last instance” is ideology; whereas for Marx it the productive forces and the relations of production. For Marx the dream/illusion or “false consciousness” constituted by the ‘day’s residues’ of individuals materially producing their existence needs to be interpreted in order to discover the reality of the world. And it is those relationships of production at the level of the infrastructure or economic base that have become one of the central components of historical materialism. Althusser, however, claims to “go beyond” the representation of base/superstructure to focus on the “point of view of reproduction” (136). This might be described as one moment in the “crisis of historical materialism” to which Stanley Aronowitz refers. Althusser’s movement away from Marx’s historical materialism without, as he says himself, wanting to “reject the classical metaphor” outright became important to the emergence of cultural studies as it encountered structuralist and poststructuralist thought – As Stuart Hall puts it, “Nevertheless, the refiguring of theory, made as a result of having to think questions of culture through the metaphors of language and textuality, represents a point beyond which cultural studies must now always necessarily locate itself" (“Cultural Studies and its theoretical legacies” 271). What exactly is the crisis of historical materialism to which Aronowitz refers? And how do divergent views of materialism within cultural studies answer to or seem to stem from this crisis?
2. In “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies,” Stuart Hall addresses Antonio Gramsci’s influence on cultural studies. Most important for Hall is the way(s) in which Gramsci "displaced some of the inheritances of Marxism” (266-7). Without a doubt Gramsci’s theory on hegemony has influenced the way various cultural theorists think about ideology. While, as Lawrence Grossberg argues, there have been (mis)readings of “the conjuncturalist form of cultural studies” as defining “the problematic of cultural studies within the ideological” (“The Formations of Cultural Studies” 56), for Grossberg (drawing on Gramsci), “Hegemony is a historically emergent struggle for power called into existence by the appearance of the masses on the political and cultural scene of civil society” (57). In this way, hegemony is not purely ideological, and it encompasses a conjuncturalist conception of historical specificity. In “Beyond ‘Doing’ Cultural Studies,” Eric Weiner distinguishes hegemony from ideology by saying it is not the process of establishing “false consciousness.” On the other hand, he does see it as somewhat similar by describing it as the process through which "discursive absences are generated, and those parts of the narrative that are left in place are represented as the whole" (65). He describes their relationship as hegemony being the “underbelly” of ideology. And Hall also seems careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water as he tries to hold onto the problem of the class structuring of ideology by drawing on Gramsci and arguing that "ideological struggle does not take place by displacing one whole, integral, class-mode of thought with another wholly-formed system of ideas." How do definitions of hegemony both relate to and break from definitions of ideology? And how might this affect a pedagogy of cultural studies or critical pedagogy?
1. "Althusser's Marxism is in the last analysis a reductionism, where ideology plays the role that the theory of mediations plays to Hegelian Marxism" (Aronowitz, The Crisis in Historical Materialism 161). For Althusser there is no practice except by and “in” ideology: “what thus seems to take place outside ideology…in reality takes place in ideology” (“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” 175). So it can be said that for Althusser the “last instance” is ideology; whereas for Marx it the productive forces and the relations of production. For Marx the dream/illusion or “false consciousness” constituted by the ‘day’s residues’ of individuals materially producing their existence needs to be interpreted in order to discover the reality of the world. And it is those relationships of production at the level of the infrastructure or economic base that have become one of the central components of historical materialism. Althusser, however, claims to “go beyond” the representation of base/superstructure to focus on the “point of view of reproduction” (136). This might be described as one moment in the “crisis of historical materialism” to which Stanley Aronowitz refers. Althusser’s movement away from Marx’s historical materialism without, as he says himself, wanting to “reject the classical metaphor” outright became important to the emergence of cultural studies as it encountered structuralist and poststructuralist thought – As Stuart Hall puts it, “Nevertheless, the refiguring of theory, made as a result of having to think questions of culture through the metaphors of language and textuality, represents a point beyond which cultural studies must now always necessarily locate itself" (“Cultural Studies and its theoretical legacies” 271). What exactly is the crisis of historical materialism to which Aronowitz refers? And how do divergent views of materialism within cultural studies answer to or seem to stem from this crisis?
2. In “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies,” Stuart Hall addresses Antonio Gramsci’s influence on cultural studies. Most important for Hall is the way(s) in which Gramsci "displaced some of the inheritances of Marxism” (266-7). Without a doubt Gramsci’s theory on hegemony has influenced the way various cultural theorists think about ideology. While, as Lawrence Grossberg argues, there have been (mis)readings of “the conjuncturalist form of cultural studies” as defining “the problematic of cultural studies within the ideological” (“The Formations of Cultural Studies” 56), for Grossberg (drawing on Gramsci), “Hegemony is a historically emergent struggle for power called into existence by the appearance of the masses on the political and cultural scene of civil society” (57). In this way, hegemony is not purely ideological, and it encompasses a conjuncturalist conception of historical specificity. In “Beyond ‘Doing’ Cultural Studies,” Eric Weiner distinguishes hegemony from ideology by saying it is not the process of establishing “false consciousness.” On the other hand, he does see it as somewhat similar by describing it as the process through which "discursive absences are generated, and those parts of the narrative that are left in place are represented as the whole" (65). He describes their relationship as hegemony being the “underbelly” of ideology. And Hall also seems careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water as he tries to hold onto the problem of the class structuring of ideology by drawing on Gramsci and arguing that "ideological struggle does not take place by displacing one whole, integral, class-mode of thought with another wholly-formed system of ideas." How do definitions of hegemony both relate to and break from definitions of ideology? And how might this affect a pedagogy of cultural studies or critical pedagogy?
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