This is where we will discuss Cheryl Ball and Ryan Moeller, “Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies.”
This web site/essay and the one by Comstock and Hocks are kind of “remainder readings” in that I wanted to include them but I wasn’t really sure where to do that. I guess here. I also think this piece is pretty straight-forward, and one of the reasons why I include it here is because it kind of brings together a lot of the other things we’ve read and discussed this term.
We didn’t get into the binary thing that Berlin talked about that Ball and Moeller reference; it doesn’t quite fit in our discussions here, but it is part of what I think is increasingly a split between Literature and Writing when it comes to the study of English. But I guess that’s something I talked about at the beginning of the term. Where I think the tie is interesting for our purposes is that “web 2.0″ is more about making stuff, while literary studies has traditionally been more about reading (consuming?) stuff.
By the way, they mention that “Words are the Ultimate Abstraction” piece, but the link doesn’t work. I think this is a link to the same video though.
Anyway, that should get you started.
The most interesting part of this particular piece is the discussion about shift in thought toward particular modes of composition. For instance, work from James Berlin is discussed about the attitudes seen in contemporary English departments concerning the rhetoric/poetic split. I thought this topic shed light on the definitions and ideas we assign to certain kinds of writing at certain times and how changes to discourse cause us to re-evaluate those assignments. (I especially got a chuckle when, on page 5, they say that “composition studies is generally considered the ‘low form’ of English studies…”) I can see where attitudes could then extend to newer forms of composition– like creating websites or media in place of traditional writing– since comparison seems to be a common practice.
Personally, I think that stepping out of the proverbial box in composition and creating something more “creative” is just as hard– if not harder– than writing an essay, if both are done “well.” And, honestly, I see teachers being more critical of a more media-oriented piece than they are of a written work simply, perhaps, because of that idea of it being an artistic/aesthetic piece in addition to being informative/complete. I wonder how my classmates feel about that, though?
I realize that Dr. Krause wants us to focus on the web 2.0 stuff near the end of the article, but I think this is still interesting… at least to me.
No, you can talk about this too! Good points and observations from everyone here. One thing I would add is I think the study of technology in the materialistic way we have been here– that is, the importance of how a technology/a medium changes the “content”– is also one of the things that is a distinction between literary studies and writing studies.
I also thought it was interesting how the comp/rhet has often come to be seen as the low end, with the more aesthetic/creative encompassing the high end. You look at someone like Plato who seemed to devalue poetics, placing rhetoric and science above it, and it seems to have flipped over time… at least within the English Department.
I touched on this topic a little bit in my blog entry, while addressing the issue of binaries. I think that many of the ancient rhetoricians would have thought that the aesthetics of writing aren’t necessarily divorced from the logic and arguments but, instead, they would have seen the scholarly and aesthetic as two parts to the whole of good persuasion.
It’s interesting that, due to disciplinarity, English departments try to split writing into two separate sub-disciplines (creative versus scholarly); however, it seems pretty clear after studying rhetoric over time that these aren’t two separate types of writing at all.
I know. It’s like in the article how Wysocki is quoted as saying something about how all forms of composition are trying to serve an artistic/aesthetic need…
I like that they mention creating more of the “remix” culture in order to help students learn in a scholarly way. Mostly because this is my research project, but I agree that it has the potential to be incredibly helpful to students and the way they learn. I also thought it was cool how there were hyperlinks in this text, it really stood out to me as being an important facet of the 21st century and the texts we read. If I didn’t know who Wesch was, or the Web 2.0 they authors were talking about, I could click on their links and BAM! I am all caught up. It truly shows how the nature of literacy is changing. I wonder is there is a program that is semi-permanent I could have my students work on to create something like this- a “professional” article with links to outside sources. Would it just be a Wiki or blog? I’m not sure, but it seems cool! I also liked the mentioning of Scott McCloud, while I clicked on the hyper-link a few times, it never let me listen to the podcast, or whatever it was, I think my wireless internet was being picky, but the fact that they mentioned McCloud as a way to kind of bridge the high and low debate was really great in my mind. And I agree, we need to teach new media with new media and compose in new media. It’s the only way to get students accustomed to the more professional ways of using technology. Even though they’re considered “digital natives” doesn’t mean much as most of our other literature has pointed out.
Obviously, as technologies develop and spread, our ability to create new forms with which to present content grows. And, since the lines between aestethic/scholarly are blurring, it really opens up the cocept of rhetoric. Mulitmedia and web 2.0 allow for rhetorical choices to be richer, and arguably more effective. I think part of getting English departments to recognize how the aestethic/scholarly are converging is in teaching our students how to use their creativity to enhance their academic pursuits. Showing them how music, hypertext, video, etc. can be used as an element of rhetoric even when tackling more “academic” topics. We experience/evaluate form before we consume content, and I think getting our students to understand this and use it effectively can start to erase the creative/academic paradigms that have driven these heirarchial attitudes in English/Comp Departments.
I like your positive attitude Dave. And, I would love to see more creativity within the halls of the academy. It just seems that there is a lot of pressure from outside the academy and outside rhet/comp to keep writing as analytic as possible. I’m not sure this is in the best interest of our students as it seems to me many students need to get more comfortable with their own interior before they can really start mastering clear, academic prose. The web and multimodal theory really does open up a lot of possibilities for the classroom, however I think these approaches are difficult to justify to someone outside of the discipline and even more so to someone outside the academy.
But if English Departments get more “creative” then they’ll be no better than the Creative Writing programs they all look down upon. And after studying the history of how the English Department evolved throughout the centuries (in my CHL program,) they have spent a good many years building their dead, white, male canon so they could gain the elitism they desired, get the respect they wanted from the sciences, and move away from the “feminine/childish” stigma they came with. I don’t think we’re going to move away from the traditional modes completely for a long time. In fact, I wonder if or when there ever would be a time when regular comp classes taught in these web 2.0 modes as a first means to the teaching of writing rather than as “extras” to tackle if they have time, or in specialized courses.
I think this tension is there, but what is interesting is (at least I think this is true) there is also a simultaneous tension from both inside and outside writing programs to push new technologies, web 2.0 projects, multimedia things, etc. And sometimes the same people who are calling for rigor and analytical writing are also calling for multimedia. It can be a tough line to walk for sure.
I felt like I was in a whole new world. Geez. The hyperlinks and putting all the theories together. It’s a happy place but then I realized I have to make a MAE video! I just have to. I could read for hours. I wanted to keep on going and see how far this website would take me. I just want someone to show me how to make a MAE video.
New media writing is formulaic. Was it Wysocki that said that we make 10 thousand choices while writing? Or something like that? And these new media texts are encouraging students to do more, create more, and just shock the hell out of people. We must be thinking faster.
I wonder if and when and what happens when students or people stop asking to be published by the journals and throw stuff up on the internet.
And this issue of CREDIBILITY keeps popping up all over the place! It’s frustrating.
Credibility issues between high and low art/ lit/ text/ medium/ dept/ people. I mean that’s not at all productive.
I’d love to make a museum. My facebook page and blog seem like my only new media outlets. I’d like to not bore my readers and incorporate new mediums.
I want to make a museum or create something significant that helps other students or people. I tried to make a wesch/ MAE video several times.
What do they mean a department that accepts digital scholarship?! Are we allowed to do our thesis in other kinds of mediums? I think this is really important.
I’d like to learn XML but it seems so daunting. How the heck does a prof make that fun?
How do you try to incorporate XML into an ENG class?
Facebook changes people’s personality. I noticed that people change along with their friends. They post the same stuff, have the same interests and most play farmville.
There are major obvious trends. And then there are people that stick out like a sore thumb. But I’ll leave that for a blog entry.
Renee, when they talk about departments accepting digital scholarship toward the end of this piece, they’re really talking about what it takes for a professor to get tenure and promotion. Long story short: a lot of English departments don’t think that any sort of digital/multimedia work that a faculty person does ought to count as “scholarship” when it comes to tenure and promotion.
And XML is really just a kind of coding like HTML– or really, HTML is a kind of XML in a way. We talk about that a bit (mostly indirectly) in Writing for the World Wide Web
What about Wesch? He was accepted.
What do you have to do to have it accepted? Cover a topic that is of interest to the department?
If they do not accept a faculty person’s digital work then I don’t know what to say about that. They are rejecting way more than that person’s work.
mmmm sorry about the incoherent and fragment sentences and all-over-the place thought process.
I’ve thought for a long time that university departments should welcome and value non-standard ways of presenting one’s academic work, or as Ball and Moeller put it, “academic literacies made public in a format that invites popular and scholarly critiques should be valued by the academy.” When it comes to scholarship and tenure boards, the elitism of many university departments tends to stifle a lot of the choices we more commonly encourage undergraduates to consider; for example, what is the argument you’re trying to make, and what form/platform/genre/whathaveyou will allow you to make that argument most effectively given your content and constraints? In Wesch’s case, Ball and Moeller point out that “multimodal composition afforded him topoi and commonplaces that traditional, alphabetic textual choices would not have.” But faculty are not afforded this flexibility as often, since the conventions of writing in academia are so strict: write a words-in-a-row text for a tiny audience of fellow academics; have it published in print as bound book; repeat ad infinitum. My sense is that some universities are more flexible than others, and academia in general is slowly starting to come around as more non-standard academic texts gain popularity and become more mainstream, like Wesch’s (awesome!) video, but we’re definitely not there yet. For this very reason, I like that Eastern’s English Department conceptualizes our final master’s project as more than just a traditional thesis. I just wish others elsewhere felt similarly.
You are right on Carrie! Many English Departments can’t get away from the canon and their elitist attitude towards it, and the words-in-a-row essays that they can compose in perfectly. We were talking in my class last night about how English Departments make students hate different genres with the way they present it, like poetry for example, my professor was saying that most countries around the world love poetry while most American’s can’t stand it because English classes teach stuff that students can’t usually “get” on their own and force them to replicate the same stifling patterns. If we allowed students choice over what they were composing, I doubt many would pick the epic poem but would go for a YouTube video that they would be more than happy to put a great deal of time and effort composing!
Angie, yes! Students always see composition as a chore–something to be gotten through, as if once they finish, they’ll never have to compose again. I agree that the fun element of teaching writing and literature is often lost, and assigning something like a video poem could make it new and exciting. It would also open up the conversation about content and form and meaning, so it’s useful on a lot of levels!
Just an aside about poetry and young people nowadays: During Obama’s inauguration when Elizabeth Alexander recited her poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” I was following the Facebook feed and saw so many ignorant, uninformed comments from young people–I was appalled! I couldn’t believe how little respect they had for her and her work, or how they made absolutely no effort to understand a poem that, as you say, isn’t particularly hard to “get.” On the other hand, when I go to poetry slams and local youth poetry readings, I’m always energized by their talent and commitment to the form. I think the reason behind this dichotomy is exactly what you say about what gets students motivated to write: ways of making the composing and delivery new and exciting. This excitement can then spill over into the study of older, more traditional and conventional forms. Again, a win-win situation!
I was especially fascinated by p 8 where Ball and Moeller discuss the 2008 Presidential election; and how they believed it may “soon be displaced by a striking rise in political inter/action …” This was certainly a fortuitous comment as Obama’s win was largely credited with the social networking sites.
I also agree with their comment that “we can teach students to use rhetoric and aesthetics.” I believe that the authors do a credible job of showing us how that can be affected.
I appreciate the way the authors show the fusion of the various modes, or the dualities of them. Even though they state that the various English departments don’t accept the non-written modes, their article would certainly be a good encourager for a department to take another look in their direction.
One thing that keeps coming up, and not just in this particular article, but in many articles, are the same authors: Selfe, Wycocki, Eilola, Wesch, etc. It seems to me that so many of these authors make references to the other authors and it seems to just go in a circular fashion.
I hope this made sense (it’s hard to see through my tears-I was rooting for Butler!)
I also
Judy, I think you bring up a really interesting and important point here. We do need to teach students how to interact with, analyze, and be critical of the information they are getting over the internet, especially when it comes to things like healthcare and the presidential election. And yes, there are a lot of connections between all these authors, it’s like a club and you’re article isn’t important unless you mention certain names
Thanks for that, Angie. I really am beginning to get the feeling that each one capitalizes on the other and, not to say that there is no new thinking, but it makes me wonder if their rhetoric is perhaps a little self-serving.
I have to admit that I am fascinated with the idea of rhetoric. Although I have taught English for years and certainly taken enough English classes in my time, I wonder if I should be going back and taking a course in rhetoric. I certainly know how to make a credible argument, but ‘rhetoric’ per se was not something I was taught. Now it seems to be the new buzz and we certainly need to teach our students how to make a credible argument and defend it.
I like what Dave said about teaching students that “music, hypertext and video can be used as an element of rhetoric.” I think this links back to one of the first articles we read about how the written language is beginning to wane and be displaced by the visual. After reading all we have had to read this semester, I would rather say that the written language is going to be only one element of communication in the future and that it will be enhanced by the visual and aural! Too bad I didn’t realize this in the beginning of the class.
The old saying “a picture can say a thousand words” stands true for mixing all these new mediums together. I am with everyone else when they talk about making it happen in the schools. It seems like HS are so hung up with teaching to the standardize tests that there is not much room for multi-media projects. I do appreciate the flexibility of EMU’s English Department but what happens to all the young people in HS that want that creative/scholarly adventure in English. Do they have to go a special “Arts” school to be able to do it?
I think that if writing/English teachers just think of writing as that….writing then this issue would not really even exist. I even have students who, when I say we are going to make web based genres, look at me like, REALLY? They just think that is not the way they should be writing. There is so much emphesis placed on seperating out genres and ways of writing that we make it so that people look down upon the different types of writing as not real writing. I talk in my classes so much around the idea that writing is all types and genres and not one is better than the other, but they all serve different purposes and need to be used for the purpoes they are intended. It is so hard to get students to realize they have creativity when they write when they feel like they dont know how to create a poem or song or some genre that is considered “creative.” I think the divide is coming together here but not as much as it can and should. I really like this article because it shows that this is a contructed idea of what is good writing and not really about what is actually good writing or high and low art.