No posts for a long time...

Well, the plan for blogging all my readings has fallen through... it was working for awhile but then life gets in the way. The good news: I have been keeping up with reading (primarily). Now I want to use this post to sketch out some ideas for the prelim proposal, even though I'm not nearly done reading and need to have the texts with me. But here goes.

My proposal is centered around three major areas that characterize my academic interests: composition theory/pedagogy, rhetoric and rhetorical invention, and digital/personal/experimental writing. There are significant overlaps across the lists, despite their apparent differences. I have chosen these areas because they represent, for me, the major issues that my later work will center around. The first list, Composition theory/pedagogy, centers around the key issues in the field such as the theory/practice debate; issues of literacy; process versus post-process; and the field as a discipline. These issues are significant because they are the major issues in the field.
The second list, rhetoric and rhetorical invention, attempts to place rhetorical invention (one of the 5 canons of rhetoric) within the history of rhetoric as a field. Since the two are so closely aligned throughout the history of rhetoric, it makes sense that this list investigate the relationships between these two areas. Invention is an interest of mine because it bridges rhetoric and teaching: the key areas that make up my prelim list.
Finally, the third list blends three areas of study because these areas emerge from similar (postmodern) issues. Both digital and experimental writing are often discussed together because they emerge from similar concerns about the ways that writing is changing in response to technology. Personal writing shares these concerns, and has provided significant inroads to thinking about the ways in which personal writing resists conventional codes and norms.
To provide more detail, I will elaborate the choices of texts in each list. The texts in the composition theory and pedagogy list represent, as I stated earlier, key issues in the field. I begin with key texts about the disciplinary development. Texts like Maureen Daly Goggin's Authoring a Discipline, James Berlin's Rhetoric and Reality, Sharon Crowley's Composition in the University, and Susan Miller's Texutal Carnivals offer contexts for understanding the discipline's development. Goggin explores the key journals and publications of the field since its early inception in the 20th century. For Goggin, looking at the history of publications offers key insights into the field: what has been valued in what circumstances; what areas of study have been the most influential; and how the
publications represent the discipline. Berlin writes a history of composition instruction since 1900 in universities. Berlin creates a taxonomy by which to understand this history: objective, subjective, and______. This taxonomy classifies the approaches to teaching so that readers can understand how the theories have responded to ideological/historical concerns, as well as to see the various ways in which the field has coalesced around these issues. Crowley and Miller raise different issues about the place of composition in the academy. Crowley also traces the history of the discipline, but focusing this history around the idea of subjectivity and the abolition of the field because it promotes a certain subjective position culled from the 19th-century notions of humanism. Miller examines the role of teaching composition, and equates it with secondary status.
Other areas on the list explore central questions like the role of teaching in relationship to theory. Several texts on my list take this up, and many texts take this up indirectly. Texts like Harris, Faigley, Ede, Berlin, Kameen, McComiskey, Dobrin, and several others deal with the place of theory in composition studies. It seems that this is the central issue defining the field, especially since so much of what we do centers on our position in the academy. Especially with declining funds and the pressure for universities to streamline budgets, composition's place in the academy remains tenuous at best. These texts raise the question: what counts as knowledge in the field? What responsibility and or obligation do we have as a field to submit to academic pressure and publish theoretical research articles? Why has teaching continued to have such a low status in the academy?

My own questions about this list center around the theory and practice debate, especially as it relates to teaching: how can we theorize teaching so that it makes practice sustainable and accountable to who is in our classrooms? How might we use what we learn in the classroom to enhance theory -- but also to create spaces for new theories or articulations to emerge? What might composition studies contribute to the overall discourse about writing, cultural studies, and education in general that renders it indispensable for university education -- a fact that, despite critiques, budget crises, and a plethora of other obstacles, demonstrates the pervasive commitment to writing and teaching? Finally, how can praxis (the blend of theory and practice in Freire's terms) allow for new versions of the writing curriculum/classroom to emerge; versions that take into account influences of new media writing, educational theory, and everyday life.