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March 27, 2005

Birdsong

The birds are back.

Actually, they've been back for a couple of weeks, but today for some reason it seems there are more of them, and more variety of songs in the still bare trees in the still freezing morning.

I always thought birds returned when it got warm. I guess it has more to do with light. But I'm so glad to hear them. It's such a nice way to start a day.

Posted by cageyer at 07:37 AM | Comments (1)

Bracketology

Let's just say that bracketology isn't my game. I lost the whole Austin region shortly after the first round, lost most of the others by the sweet sixteen, and after yesterday, lost my bid for some kind of unique finish when Louisville beat West Virginia. Who could believe the comeback of the Illini last night? They get extra credit for being all but beaten and keeping the fighting attitude needed to turn it around. I have them picked to go to the final, but so does everyone else, of course. But I also had them loosing that game to Syracuse. oops.

Ah, well. As our friends Searles and Weinberger say: learning happens, and when things go wrong, different learning happen.

yup.

Posted by cageyer at 07:21 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2005

Book Meme

I found this over on Arete and thought this was one I could actually do. I love books, and found it hard to narrow down choices here, but today, these are my answers.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Many times. Some of the fine men who come to mind are: Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Brandon Clayton Birmingham in The Flame and the Flower, the boy in The Black Stallion (when I was in elementary school), Francisco d'Anconia in Atlas Shrugged, and others whose names escape me at the moment.

The last book you bought is:
For school: Standing At Armageddon by Nell Irvin Painter.
For fun: Walden, in a pocket series hardcover

The last book you read:
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Just finished it over the break. After seeing the Emma Thompson adaptation many times, I thought I should see it in the original. Thumbs up for both.

What are you currently reading?
Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920, Antonio Gramsci; Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci's Political and Cultural Theory by Walter Adamson; Composition Rhetoric by Robert Connors, Tropics of Discourse by Hayden White; The Writing of History by de Certeau. Just starting: Precarious Life by Judith Butler.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Dune by Frank Herbert
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand (might be the only way I'll ever get through the 60 pages of John Galt's radio address…)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Selected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Like JMP I thought about including the Bible too. If I were going to do that, I'd leave Emerson behind.

I could do the last part and send it to three other folks, but I think instead I'll just invite anyone finding this to post theirs either as a comment or in their own blog one with a trackback.

Posted by cageyer at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2005

Champions!!!!

What a treat last night! The University of Washington Husky men's basketball team won the Pac-10 championship last night, beating Arizona by 9 points, a difference that belies the close nature of the game. I didn't think they could do it, but they did! They kept in close, led once or twice only, and then at the end took the lead and never gave it back.

When I started at the UW, basketball just wasn't out game. Our football team won the Rose Bowl that first year I was in attendance, and I was among the happiest students on campus. (I still get a tickle about that).

About a year before I left the UW to come to Syracuse, a decidedly basketball school, Lorenzo Romar was hired as the new head coach for the basketball team. I got a chance to meet him very briefly, and he seemed and fine and pleasant man. What a difference he has made for the team! In a short 3 or 4 years, he took his team from mediocrity to a chamionship - their first ever!

And it was televised! Even here in Syracuse! Yay!

And then, right after, I got to watch Syracuse beat an extremely scrappy and determined West Virginia in the Big East Championship! Back to back wins from both my schools. How cool is that? And what a fine capstone for Hakim Warrick, Josh Pace and Craig Forth, the one championship they didn't have they now have. Very cool!

So it was quite a happy evening.

Update: in the extreme OMG category....
So now the Huskies are a number 1 seed for the tournament.
A Number 1 Seed.
Number 1.

in basketball?!?

The LoRo factor is huge. God bless him.

Did you hear, by the way, the commentators talking about how many of the young men on that team come from nearby high schools like Garfield and Kent? Very cool.

So what happens if/when the Huskies meet the Orange when each does well in their bracket?

??!!???

Posted by cageyer at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2005

Correctness counts

I found this wonderful entry from Jennifer Rice about building one's blog. Great advice to lay alongside the other helpful tips we've had in Networked Rhetorics. But notice Ms. Rice's comment, the first one on the list, on what will instantly disqualify a blog from link eligibility.

I couldn't help but think about the debates we have in our field over sentence-level pedagogy and other forms of teaching "correctness." Apparently, correctness does still count, even in the blogosphere.

Posted by cageyer at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2005

Visitng Days

The last two days have been visiting days for candidates for the CCR program. They'll go home from it all well fed, loaded with information, advice, stories, and hopefully a sense of whether this is the right place for them. Last year, I was one of them; an internal candidate with an acceptance letter grinning from ear to ear and happier than words to have been admitted to the program that had me move all the way across the country two years earlier.

I hope if was really fun for them. I hope it is memorable, and that they have the sense we are interested in them as scholars and as people. They're a terrific group, with interesting and diverse research interests. I'm glad I don't have to make the choice.

Collin, Jennifer, and the rest of the graduate committee did a bang-up job putting these two days together. Shout outs to Mary Beth, LouAnn and Chris for setting up, ordering up, and especially, cleaning up. My applause to committee, and my best to the candidates, wherever their journey takes them from here.

Posted by cageyer at 09:18 PM | Comments (1)

And now a word from the Department of Cheap Advice

don't grab the frying pan handle to move the pan when it has just come out of the oven.

owie!

Posted by cageyer at 12:08 AM | Comments (3)

March 02, 2005

Another Semester Project

This one is for my "Globalization and Religion" class, where we have taken up the general subject of Global Civil Society, and the role of religion in it.

Working Title: Rhetoric of NGOs and Other Elements of Global Civil Society

Basic Methodology: rhetorical analysis

Description
I would like to take up exploring the rhetoric of various NGOs and other agencies of global civil society. In their mission statements, what language is there? War? Battle? Morality? I have been very interested in how rhetoric plays in the texts we've read in the course so far, and the numerous references to Bourdieu, and since rhetoric is my field and globalization will be one of my exam areas in rhetoric, I think this fits for me. So I see it working something like this:

So if anyone out there has any suggestions for NGOs or other groups, comments, questions, or advice, please do share.

The fun continues!

Posted by cageyer at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2005

The (slightly late) overview, or Perrin's diss, take 3

The hardest part of turning the former proposal into an overview is the timetable. So much depends on the when different materials arrive, or when I can get to different places, and how much I actually decide to "do" versus "plan" by semester's end, but here's a whirl at it anyway (bib omitted for space reasons, since it hasn't changed):

Project Working Title: Editing Porter Perrin's Dissertation

Rational: Porter Perrin directed Albert Kitzhaber's dissertation, but is underrepresented in this history of composition scholarship. By following John Gage's example in his editing of Kitzhaber's dissertation, I will provide an overview of Perrin's writing, his academic work, the influences on him and those he influenced.

Methodology: Historicism. I will contextualize Perrin's work and influences for the twenty-first century composition scholar/practitioner.

Method: Primarily archival research, including primary texts authored or edited by Perrin, introductory material by co-authors in later editions of Perrin's texts, and Perrin's papers at Colgate University and the University of Washington. In addition to reading of texts, engage reference librarians at Syracuse University, for outside materials and SU Archives for work of Leonard Brown and use of Perrin's texts in English courses here, Colgate and UW. Investigate connections between Perrin and co-authors of his books, and where applicable discuss the paths from those associations.

Initial Goal (for this course): Read the dissertation, review other materials, begin compiling footnotes for the dissertation text, draft a preliminary introduction, an outline of the overall project and a plan for its completion.

Research Questions:
- What would a twenty-first century student or practitioner in the field of composition need to know to understand Perrin's dissertation and its relevance?
- Porter Perrin is a white male academic working in the middle of the twentieth century. At a time when recovery work focuses on underrepresented groups, what can be gained by a better understanding of Perrin's work?

Some supporting questions:
- What does the reader need to know about the author's life? (This is the biographical part.)
- What allusions, literary, social, or otherwise, shape the meaning of the text?
- With whom was Perrin working/studying at the University of Chicago? How, if at all, do the values or theories of those people influence the text?
- How much of Perrin's dissertation work is revealed, followed, or departed from in his later work?
- How widely used were Porter's Writer's Guide, Reference Handbook, Index, and Guide used?
- Besides Kitzhaber, what other dissertations did Perrin direct, if any, and what other working relationships did he have the influenced the field of composition and rhetoric?
- What other information about Perrin's work in the field is important and relevant?

Timetable (guessing!)
Feb. 24: Request available known texts from Illiad
Mar. 3: Begin connections table and commonplace book (for example, collect Connors's references to Perrin from Composition-Rhetoric). Begin trace/documentation of Perrin's chronology.
Mar. 10: Have notes collected from first 9 Perrin texts received (4 on hand, 5 on hold as of 3/1). Have contacted librarians, schedule meetings at SU and Colgate, attempt online "meeting" with librarian at UW. Have contacted English department chair at UW for assistance as well.
Mar. 24: Write a response/comment to Perrin's dissertation. Construct a short essay describing what I think Perrin's work meant, what was important to him, etc., based on what I find in his work (aka, draft answers to research questions). Have preliminary outline of introduction. Have draft of chronology of Perrin's life and work, and table of connections.
Mar. 31: Separate "do" from "plan" in writing
Apr. 7: Draft of introduction and plan ready for submission.

This may seem thin still, but it's a different type of project, so these are sort of benchmarks to get to a draft. The real work, it seems to me, comes after the draft.

cross-posted to DawgNotes

Posted by cageyer at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

Composition (and) (or) Rhetoric

I wrote this first as a comment to Ty's post, but comments get lost easily and I want to open this up in my own space as well.

Last week in 611 we were asked if we "doubted" that rhetoric was privileged over composition in our program. Now, the fact that the question was posed in the negative suggests that we were all supposed to nod in unison and assume the posture of the marginalized. We didn't. We almost unanimously said the opposite. I stayed out of the conversation, for a number of reasons, but in part because it was an undefined, loaded question. It begs some questions:

1. When we say "rhetoric" what exactly are we referring to?

2. When we say "program" are we referring to the CCR program or the Writing Program?

I ask the latter because it is too easy to conflate the two, to perceive the CCR program as a part of the Writing Program, when it is not. Though the lines are sometimes hard to find, CCR is a stand-alone program, that, like the English department, offers Teaching Assistantships to teach in the Writing Program. Coming from English as I do, I find that distinction extremely important.

I ask the former for some of the reasons others have already mentioned above, and for a few others of my own. It is a rare course in this program that actually teaches rhetoric. The Ancient Rhetoric class in the fall gave us a nice overview of the field of rhetoric, from Plato through Burke and other more recent folk. But the "rhetoric" courses I've had up to this point fall more into that distinction of "rhetorics of..." than actual courses in the study or learning of rhetoric. We don't learn or practice rhetoric as an art form, don't present speeches, or share "themes" or other work that would resemble for me the actual learning of rhetoric. We study other's writing and take up rhetorical analysis, which comes with its own variety of methods.

So, just to be a bit feisty (or as Dianna has dubbed me, to fulfill my role as a shameless agitator...) I would argue that rhetoric is not privileged in our program. I would further argue some of our faculty members privilege critical theory over just about anything, and it often appears in classes that have "rhetoric" in the title. Cultural Rhetoric sometimes seems to be cultural studies and critical theory.

Derek was right about the jobs that our graduates go on to, that they are composition based, or writing program director aimed. I think this is in part a result of the kinds of jobs that are available (comp/rhet job listings tend to talk a whole lot more about comp than about rhetoric). Most comp/rhet folks hired into English departments are asked to teach different kinds of composition, from FYC to technical writing and other genres in between. But seldom have I seen a posting that asks the candidate to be prepared to teach rhetoric courses. And even if such a posting existed, nothing I've learned in graduate school leaves me feeling prepared to teach such a course.

Robert Connors writes in several places in Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy about speech and communication breaking off from English, and rhetoric going with the comm folks. Look at our own school: CCR may be housed with the writing program and part of A&S, but Communication and Rhetorical Studies is part of a different college. That seems worth interrogating on its own. The way rhetoric is taught and discussed in those courses is different than they way we take it up - as evidenced from Ty's comments in this thread, and other comments he has made.

I wanted to be in this program because of the "cultural" modifier in rhetoric. But what I thought that meant was that I would get to work with with many ways rhetoric is employed in culture, to bring my experiences in the world of business into the "house that Aristotle built" to better learn how to analyze different genres of real-world writing , and subsequently to apply classical rhetoric techniques and strategies to broaden and develop my own skills with language, and ultimately to learn how to teach that variety of skills to students. I can't imagine for the life of me ever being in a composition or lower division rhetoric course and teaching Foucault, or Lacan, or Althusser, or any of the other dozens of theorists I've been subjected to in the same of English or CCR. That renders my "training" somewhat useless to me intended practice.

So to wind up this very long post, let me just ask that we be a little more careful and a little more precise in furthering this damaging binary of composition and rhetoric. It's bad enough that we have a field still subordinated to "literature" or the critical theory urge of many English departments; we don't need to further divide ourselves. I found it very disturbing in my English courses when instructors attempted to draw lines between the "writers" meaning the creative writing/MFA students, and the "scholars," of the MA/PhD students. It was a ridiculous division and I said so in class. We, the MA folks, weren't all caught up in theory, some of us really appreciated literature, and those writers in the room knew a lot more about analyzing forms and plots and characters, etc., than we did. We had plenty we could learn from them, and I fought against the needless attempts at divisivness. Much as I am doing here. The creation of text, whether written, visual, hybrid, digital, or whatever, is also an exercise in rhetoric. I think we do ourselves more good by seeking the "and" rather than the "or".

Posted by cageyer at 11:30 AM | Comments (2)

Commonplace Books

Last week in 611 Beloved Professor (Becky) took a few minutes to explain her methods of categorizing/storing/organizing information, a discussion that while brief was quite illuminating. As part of this system, she explained her commonplace book. Now, I have to say up front that if I had bothered to look it up in the OED in the first place, I might have had one of these a long time ago. But I didn't, so I didn't. The simple answer is that a commonplace book is means to keep references and resources in a common place.

I was first introduced to the commonplace book in my advanced expository writing course as an undergraduate. There we were asked to collect passages or phrases from writing with style we particularly liked. I didn't really get the purpose at the time, except to see it as a way of developing a style of my own, based on the writings I collected in that one place along with my own thoughts on what I liked about each.

This commonplace book idea is different. It's more like a filing system I used to keep back when I was in the business world, when I built my own reference "library" in a series of files (this tactic later led me to better positions where research and technical knowledge were needed, and finally to educating, creating and teaching courses based on the information I had collected and organized) organized by topic, and cross-referenced to related topics and items filed in other places.

In scholarship, it seems the purpose is similar, collecting information organized by topics or ideas, rather than just by authors or books or other items found in databases and indexes. I had been thinking that I needed some system to organize my many notebooks full of notes, summaries, responses, and readings. I have lots of material that I know is "somewhere" but I have begun to lose track of which course included what reading, and that sort of thing. I have been planning to invest a good solid week or so shifting my organization from "by-course" to "by-subject" but have been putting it off because I didn't have a good system to replace the current one in mind.

Now, this simple idea of the commonplace book helps bring a frame for this porject, and makes a ton of sense relative to my prior experience with the value of a personally constructed reference library.

I think I'm starting to take my academic career seriously.

Posted by cageyer at 10:11 AM | Comments (4)