Just wanted to draw your attention to a couple of articles in Feb. 2008 CCC that connect to FYC issues:
Jane Danielewicz's article "Personal Genres, Public Voices" led me to revisit an issue I wrote about a few years ago, prompted by a fairly active blogosphere conversation at the time on personal vs public vs political writing in comp classes. A number of bloggers, as I recall, seemed to devalue writing based (solely) on personal experience, depositing it like a nasty-smelling rag held pinched between thumb and forefinger into the expressivist bucket of dirty mop-water. (And, to tell you the truth, I'm not too fond of those car accident, dead grandmother essays either that the personal narrative assignment seems to evoke.) Anyway, Danielewicz makes an interesting case that goes beyond the simplistic dichotomy of personal vs political writing to argue that
writing in personal genres, where the "I" is at the center, not only develops voice and cultivates identities but also enhances authority. Authority increases the chances that individuals are able to participate in public discourse, which is, ultimately, agency. (421)
It all raises interesting questions, I think, about where we're asking our students to draw their information and on what basis we're helping them to develop their "public voices."
* * * * * * *I'd also recommend Richard C. Raymond's article "When Writing Professors Teach Literature: Shaping Questions, Finding Answers, Effecting Change," or, as he puts the question later in the paper,
What happens when a literature course gets taught as a writing course, complete with reader-response journals, group work, peer response groups, conferences, revisions?
(I found this particularly interesting because my CC sets up 2nd semester comp as Writing About Literature, which is intended to be taught as a comp class but often, laden with a hefty anthology, seems to take on Lit Crit Lite tones.) Raymond writes about teaching American Lit (Dickinson and Whitman, mostly) in Albania to students "used to memorizing facts but not to thinking about those facts...Not used to writing to discover what they know, what they want to know, what they want to shape or change." Sound familiar??
Recent Comments