Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Thank you all so much for the warm welcome Ive received in Winnipeg as a visiting Fulbright scholar. The faculty and administrators here have been extraordinarily generous with their time in answering my endless questions, offering historical perspectives, and engaging in thoughtful conversations about this department, institution, city, and Canadian ways of doing things. It has been an amazing, intense learning experience. I thought six weeks was a long time, but it has gone by in a flash, and Ill leave next week with a folder-full of unanswered questions, stacks of notes to sort out and make sense of, and a wish list of others I had hoped to interview before I ran out of time. It is fortunate that the project that brought me here is a collaborative one, which will continue without me. But I will not leave it behind. . . my visit has opened up new paths for my own scholarship and graduate teaching, and I have plans for future collaborations with my colleagues here. Let me explain a little more about the circumstances that brought me to Winnipeg. The Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications sought me out, as a Fulbright specialist in rhetoric and composition and writing studies, to assist in a reflective project to critically examine its programs and chart new directions for its future as a faculty. The proposal for a grant called for me to observe, evaluate, advise, andto the extent possible in six weekscollaborate with the faculty in a process they called program architecture renewal. I take this to imply both recuperation and conservation of the best of its past and also invention and revision that builds on present strengths and potential. The faculty conceived this project as both broader and deeper than the usual program evaluation. They wanted me to help them reflect on the character and history of the department, not only within the institution, but also in relation to both the U.S. and Canadian contexts for instruction and scholarship in writing, rhetoric, and communication. Internally, they wanted to make connections and create synergies among programs and faculty activities both vertically, by articulation among levels of the curriculum, and horizontally, by dialogue among the departments intellectual traditions. Ive tried to contribute to all these goals, but I will focus here especially on understanding the department in terms of the contexts into which it fits at different scales of description. (This was a tall order. My outsider status gave me fresh eyes, but to learn so much so fast was like drinking water from a fire hose. So the picture I construct here is necessarily tentative and incomplete.) I asked these questions: As a department of Rhetoric, Writing, and
2
Communications, how is it part of larger scholarly and pedagogical communities in Canada and beyond? How is it distinctive in that scene? Second, how does it fit into the University of Winnipeg as an institution, with its own uniqueness of locale, mission, and constituencies? This is the framework in which I try to assess and highlight the ways the unusual profile and history of this department make it a valuable asset to the institution, presenting a strategic opportunity for the future development of writing and rhetoric studies at the University of Winnipeg. I will also talk a bit about the processes modeled by the Fulbright project and how these can facilitate the goals of the department. Disciplinarity and the Institutionalization of Rhetoric and Writing Studies There is a pervasive, deeply rooted attitude among many in the academy and the public that writing is merely practical. Besides the cultural traditions and historical contingencies that have produced and reinforced this notion, especially in Canada, there are some very good reasons for folks to think this way. First, writing IS practical in the sense that it is tightly bound into and constitutive of practices and systems of activity in business, government, law, science, the academy, and civic life. It is also deeply implicated in the formation and expression of identity, infusing writing with powerful emotions and values. It is profoundlynot merely practical. That is why all the disciplinary studies of writing and rhetoric in any tradition are broadly concerned with how people use language or other symbols in discursive practices, which have a reciprocal relationship to the social structures, systems, contexts, and tools that mediate human activity.1 A second reason is the paradox that writing is so deeply embedded in daily life and so ubiquitous a tool in a highly literate society that it is almost invisible as a complex phenomenon in its own right. Paradoxically, for some who use it the most, and with the greatest skill, as a tool for thought, it becomes so transparent and natural, as a extension of their own minds and bodies, that it seems not really worthy of scholarly attention.
1
As Canadian scholar Aviva Freedman has pointed out, this focus on symbolic action can be limiting,
blinding researchers to other motives of expression and communication and excluding some modes of discourse entirely. She points to the esthetic and playful in examples of professional communication. See her essay Pushing the Envelope: Expanding the Model of RGS Theory, in Rhetorical Genre Studies and Beyond, Natasha Artemeva and Aviva Freedman (Winnipeg: Inkshed, 2008), 121-41.
All the more reason, I say, that it is worthy of serious study in the academy. Written communication has become the object of inquiryan increasingly complex and expansive objectthat is at once both disciplinary, especially in the United States, and multidisciplinary; both culturally specific and intercultural, national and international. Increasingly, scholars of writing, rhetoric, discourse, and literacy across the world, from a great variety of disciplinary and practical bases, are recognizing each other as participants in a global interdiscipline. In 1986 I published a book of essays, written over the prior decade, called Composition as a Human Science, which was conceived as an effort to contribute to the emerging selfunderstanding of a discipline. Motivated by the lack of a philosophical framework in which to handle particular research questions, I asked myself what would be necessary for composition to become a sustainable discipline. Here is what I answered then (the full list is attached): an inexhaustible topic. . . a connection with, or relevance, to the intellectual life of the culture principles for differentiating itself from other fields with similar or overlapping interests a mission; a moral imperative, social responsibility methods that are mutually compatible and complementary. . . social/territorial motives and professional/institutional settings where it has an accepted role [including] journals, conventions, departments, and programs an educational system for reproducing the discipline, providing scholars with a sense of professional identity and common points of departure irony [and] self-reflexivity about its own projects and discourse (ix-x). Today I would add other requirements, like histories and historical perspectives, and I would put more emphasis on relations between the discipline and its social, political, economic, cultural, and technological contexts, as implied in the reference to a mission. But now I simply want to point out how these criteria relate to writing studies in the U.S., Canada, and beyond, focusing particularly on an inexhaustible topic and means of inquiry (the intellectual heart of disciplinarity) in relation to institutionalizing its place in the academy, including carving out a space for itselfliterally and organizationallyand developing the bureaucratic apparatus by which it does its work, makes that work visible and useful, and establishes a means and right to reproduce itself.
Accounts of the rise of studies in writing and rhetoric, in most parts of the world, tend to conceptualize it as a teaching practice or set of pedagogical responsibilitieswriting instructionlooking for a discipline. What I mean is that its practitioners want to find or develop the intellectual content (in theory and research) that would rationalize and ground their teaching practice and, indeed, they understand would engage them in ongoing inquiry. These concepts of discipline formation, however, take both the practice itself (for instance, first-year composition) and its institutional location as a given, at least as a point of departure from which it can, in fact, be very difficult to depart. Im going to reverse this arrow of development and instead suggest that writing studies can be historicized as an intellectual movement looking for a location, not only literally (where it will physically and administratively sit) but in the sense of the apparatus by which the academy defines and perpetuates such movements as disciplines. While the aspiration to study writing and rhetoric has so often arisen among practitioner communities, it develops beyond lore only when and because it is pursued for its own sake, out of intellectual curiosity and a sense of social and moral significance, whose scope is not limited to its original motive or practical site. Once begun, as a new intellectual practice of scholarship, the question becomes how it can establish and stabilize all the institutional correlates of that practice: curriculum and degrees; programs, centers, and/or departments; faculty positions; journals and organizations; undergraduate and MA degree programs, leading to professions or academic study; and doctoral studies that can reproduce the field within the academy and make it sustainable. Let me first make the claim that rhetoric and composition, or writing studies, has in the U.S. met the criteria of finding an inexhaustible (indeed, an ever-expanding) topic and developing a vast variety of methodological means for studying it. Writing no longer refers solely to linguistic communication or print literacy: it is construed as intersecting with oral and visual communication, mediated by digital technologies in global networks, deeply embedded in and constitutive of culture and society, and learned and taught over a lifetime. It is studied from every conceivable disciplinary point of view, in every aspect, at every age, and in every setting of life. To make this point concrete, I would point you to the range of peer-reviewed presentations at the main annual conference in the U.S. for rhetoric, composition, and writing studies, the 4Cs (or Conference on College Composition and Communication), which had 3000 attendees this year. Each year, the incoming chair has the notoriously thankless task of defining
5
area clusters in which proposals will be organized for reviewing. This has produced a proliferating list of clusters and exemplary topics that never quite catches up to the diversification of rhetoric and writing studies in topic, setting, and method, but is a useful way to track the development of the field. The call for papers for next years conferences includes 13 broad areas of inquiry, each of which is subdivided into up to 14 specific areas of specialized work that exemplify, but do not exhaust, that category. For example, the cluster of information technologies now includes online identities, e-learning, and software development and design. The history category has recently added histories of un-schooled as well as schooled literacy practices along with histories of protest writing. The communitycivic and publiccluster includes literacy practices and programs, civic engagement and deliberation, community-based research or service, and other contexts for instruction like prisons or religious settings. A field of studies that is organized by bringing multiple perspectives to bear on an object (in this case, an expanding notion of symbolic activity) is by definition interdisciplinary, even within its disciplinary expression in a given national academic landscape. That means that the fields contributing traditions and methods actually construe writing differently, as well as drawing on different, often eclectic intellectual resources. Thats why naming it gets very tricky, because the various terms may represent different constructions of the object, different aspects or specialized sites, theoretical traditions, or research methods that may be fundamentally in conflict. Terms like rhetoric, composition, discourse, writing, communication, media, or literacy express different relationships in combinationsometimes with other terms like digital or culture and play unpredictable roles that may vary idiosyncratically from one local context to another, while perhaps generally following field-wide trends. This will be something to remember in considering the terms chosen to name the department at the University of Winnipeg, its major, the earlier Centre for Academic Writing, or the Canadian organizations that house scholars of writing, rhetoric, and cognate fields. Finally, the discipline as it has developed in the United States is characterized by a mission that is explicitly moral: originally, a pedagogical commitment to educating all students in the context of mass education, seeing writing as the key to learning; more recently, articulated in terms of social justice, access, engagement in communities beyond the academy, and broad public and civic participation.
I have spent a great deal of time demonstrating in the last five years that the intellectual enterprise of writing and rhetoric studies in the U.S. has gradually acquired the features that make it viable as a discipline within the American academy, in the pragmatic terms of my definition: it has scholarly and pedagogical territory of its own; it is capable of sustaining itself and reproducing itself through its production of scholar-teachers who populate higher education.2 These features include an array of publication outlets; a critical mass of tenured and tenurable faculty; a varied curriculum including degree programs; some research centers and external funding, if still limited; stand-alone writing programs and independent departments. Lets turn now to Canadian scholarship in writing, rhetoric, and discourse. This is not where most stories of writing studies in Canada begin: they focus on the development, location, and organizing structures of writing instruction in Canada.3 I will return to the significance of that history later, especially as it relates to the uniqueness of the Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications department in the Canadian landscape. But here, I would like to flip that script, which tends to produce a view of Canadian scholarship that is as scattered and ad hoc as the forms and settings of writing instruction. Lets think instead of Canadian scholarship on these topics as a convergent group of inquiries, representing several different research communities, that is looking for a way to develop the institutional correlates that make it visible holistically as a discipline. (Again, I dont mean that a discipline is easily bounded or unified, but that it has been disciplined as an academic field by gaining those features that make it recognizable and able to function coherently in and across academic structures). That doesnt mean it will look the same or do the same work from place to place, but that it will be able to construct a presence that informs all of those locations holistically. Right now thats not the case. But scholars seem to be taking some steps in that direction, for example by renaming their most robust professional organization the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing to broaden its scope. Let me quote excerpts from the CASDW website, explaining what it now encompasses as an emerging area of research generally referred to as Writing Studies, with subdisciplines
2
See Louise Wetherbee Phelps and John Ackerman, Making the Case for Disciplinarity in Rhetoric, Composition,
and Writing Studies: The Visibility Project, College Composition and Communication 62.1 (2010): 180-215.
3
An
exception is Jennifer Clary-Lemon, who has provided an extremely useful survey and analysis of writing research in Canada, Shifting Traditions: Writing Research in Canada, American Review of Canadian Studies 32.4 (2002): 673-94.
such as professional writing and communication, technical writing and communication, scientific writing, Writing Across the Disciplines, and more.4 The website says that CASDW is concerned with the study and teaching of non-literary writing and communication in all academic, business, government, and public contests. . . . [Its scholarship} examines the generation, interpretation, structure, and impact of discoursesit then offers a long list of disciplines and professional settingsand CASDW members also study the role of technologies, visuals, and multimedia in communication. Next it names a variety of pedagogical sites, including curriculum at several levels, writing centers, and degree programs, which cover a long list of specialized subjects like genre theory, information design, critical discourse analysis, visual rhetoric, and much more. It points to an extremely diverse body of intellectual resources from various disciplines and to the fact that CASDW members work and teach across disciplines, professions, and public contexts, in a variety of university departments and faculties. The program for this years CASDW conference, which is being held this weekend, offers a sampling of work from this diverse community that is small but impressive, addressing topics from the emerging discursive conventions in nanotechnology science to a transition program that teaches academic writing by linking it to traditional models for wellness. But I wonder how many undergraduates and graduate students in Canada, even the majors in Rhetoric and Communications at Winnipeg, are aware of this emergent field and its scholars as intellectual resources and even models they might emulate. If they are not, it is becausedespite vibrant pockets of work and new programs coming on line in some universitiesthey still dont find a recognizable discipline when they look for the usual structural correlates of scholarly work: publication outlets in Canada; degree programs, especially in graduate studies; faculties and departments. And I dont think the various traditions of inquiry that span these topics have completely acknowledged each other as mutually relevant. Why did the development of scholarship in rhetoric and writing take such different courses in Canada and the United States? This question takes us back to the history of writing instruction in Canada, which has been very well documented in publications by Roger Graves
4
http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~casdw/en/home.htm
8
and others.5 I am not going to rehearse that here, but will try to provide some highlights that are revealing in comparison to the United States. According to Kevin Brooks (and others), Canadian views of writing instruction developed around an opposition between practical and cultural functions of education.6 Brooks explains how, during the 20th century, composition became associated discursively with practicality, anti-Americanism, and popular culture in opposition to English departments determination to preserve British cultural heritage. This attitude did not significantly change when in the 1970s U.S. composition teaching evolved toward a discipline, when it began to build an intellectual enterprise by studying writing as a process and reviving rhetoric as a theoretical and pedagogical tradition concerned with communication as a productive art. In part, this reflects also the different responsibilities that US universities had at the time for access. Influxes of large numbers of students, after World War II and again in the 1970s, coincides in the U.S. with periods of growth in composition toward a discipline. In contrast, a Canadian report on undergraduate English made the following remarks after reporting that large numbers of entering studentsthe student at the gateswere no longer prepared to write adequately: No department in Canada could afford to . . . devote any of its departmental budget [or teaching hours] to what is essentially not part of its real duties. The only fair and just arrangement would be to recognize the fact that bringing students up to an acceptable level for university entrance is not the universitys responsibility; it should certainly not to be expected to pay for it, or to let it interfere with its proper tasks, and it is under no moral obligation to provide instruction at any but full university level. Work which properly
5
Roger Graves, Writing Instruction in Canadian Universities (Winnipeg: Inkshed, 1994); Teaching Composition
Theory in Canada, Composition Studies 23.2 (1995): 110-14; and Composition in Canadian Universities, Written Communication 10.1 (1993): 72-105. See also Tania S. Smith, Recent Trends in Undergraduate Writing Courses and Progrms in Canadian Universities, in Writing Centres, Writing Seminars, Writing Cultures: Writing Instruction in Anglo-Canadian Universities, Roger Graves and Heather Graves, eds. (Winnipeg: Inkshed, 2006), 319-65.
6
Kevin
Brooks, National Culture and the First-Year English Curriculum: A Historical Study of Composition in Canadian Universities, American Review of Canadian Studies 32.4 (2002): 673-94. See also Henry A. Hubert, Harmonious Perfection: The Development of English Studies in Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Canadian Colleges (East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1994).
belongs in the secondary schools is no more part of a universitys responsibility than kindergarten or primary school instruction would be (20).7 This report was published in 1976, when I was in the middle of my doctoral program, a self-designed degree in composition and rhetoric. This statement expresses the antithesis of the moral motive that drove composition to develop in the U.S. But it is even more shocking in the context of the University of Winnipegs policy that accepts social responsibility for the potential students and larger community of the city and province. As a result of this disdain for practicality (as well as simply not having to deal at the time with masses of unprepared students), composition never got a foothold in Canada through widely required writing instruction for first year students. Instead, it developed in remedial units, set up in disciplines like engineering and law, or as interdisciplinary services, which evolved into variants of writing-across-the-curriculum and writing-in-the-disciplines and eventually added upper division courses and sometimes degrees.8 These were too various and unorthodox to provide the kind of institutional platform that the cross-institutional first-year required composition course gave to U.S. scholars for developing a discipline, despite all the disadvantages of its service status which made this such a struggle (and still haunts the discipline). In Canada, the move from tutorial centers into more varied offerings, cross-disciplinary integrated instruction, and degree programs was ad hoc and serendipitous, according to local conditions. Some have managed to form coalitions or establish an interdisciplinary structure that provides some institutional stability for faculty, although often these units remain nontraditional.9 In other cases, rhetoric or writing scholars formed partnerships or found homes where they could, most often with communication studies (which in Canada had a completely independent development), applied linguistics, and education. In general, rhetoric and writing studies have not coalesced easily in Canada in part because it requires the kinds of intellectual communities that arise when it is possible to assemble faculties
7
F.E.L. Priestly and H.I. Kerpneck, Report of Commission on Undergraduate Studies in English in Canadian
Universities (Association of Canadian University Teachers of English: December, 1976).
8
This
distributed system, contrasting with American rhetoric and composition, is typical of postsecondary writing instruction, where it exists, in Europe and globally.
9
For
in a common location who are empowered to pursue both scholarly projects of mutual interest and shared pedagogical responsibilities. The Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at Winnipeg The department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications is a unique exception to the ways that writing instruction developed in Canada: it is recognized as the first independent writing program, then department, in the country. Again, this history is probably well-known to those here and has been written about extensively by members of the program.10 The most salient facts are, first, that it did begin with, and still sustains, a first year program that offers the stable platform (both economically and pedagogically) for development that so many Canadian institutions lacked; and, second, that it had from the beginning a substantial full-time faculty, increasingly professionalized, that developed capabilities for both scholarly research and curricula informed by intellectual traditions in rhetoric, writing, and communication. As members of the department have recounted, by 2006 it achieved departmental status; now it encompasses a first year program; an undergraduate major; a joint Communications program with Red River College; and numerous community learning projects, curricular and extracurricular, in which department members participate in collaboration with other program and faculty. It has put forward a proposal for a Masters in Rhetoric, Writing, and Public Life with a totally distinctive focus on practical advocacy. Whether in the U.S. or Canada, an academic department, especially a relatively new one, is at once a recognition of a cosmopolitan research and teaching area that stretches across institutions at least nationally, if not internationally, and also a partial, highly contextualized, local manifestation of that complicated phenomenon. It is most successful when it is welladapted to the distinctive mission and character of its institution. Thus the last context that forms
10
See, for example, Judith Kearns and Brian Turner, Negotiated Independence: How a Writing Program Became a
Centre, WPA 21.1 (1997): 31-43; Kearns and Turner, No Longer Discourse Technicians: Redefining Place and Purpose in an Independent Canadian Writing Program, in A Field of Dreams: Independent Writing Programs and the Future of Composition Studies, Peggy ONeil, Angela Crow, and L.W. Burton, eds. (Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2002), 90-103; Tracy Whalen, Writing Programs and Coming of Age, Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing 23.1 (2011): 1-10; Brian Turner and Judith Kearns, Into the Future: A Prairie Writing Program Extends Is Tradition, in Graves and Graves, 273-95; and Jaqueline Rogers McLeod, An Undergraduate Research Methods Course, in Undergraduate Research in English Studies, Laurie Grobman and Joyce Kinkead, eds. (Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2010).
11
my own framework for thinking about this departments future is the institution itself and the setting in Winnipeg that shapes its ethos and mission. This department is as unique as the institution. It has growth and development opportunities that would both enhance this fit and further develop the capacities of the department to advance the emergent field of Canadian scholarship and pedagogy in written communication. The way I have been thinking about this is in terms of a series of binary oppositions that, at Winnipeg, have become productive tensions that the institution embodies and negotiates. In fact, several of these have organized much of this talk. I described earlier the opposition between the practical and the cultural that prevented the development of American-style composition in Canada. This opposition lingers on here in the contrast between the general humanistic disposition of the department, making rhetoric the center of a liberal arts education, and the notion that writing is practical both as a set of productive abilities and as a path to careers in the communication industry. This tension is played out productively in the Joint Communications Program and, because they are in the same classes, all undergraduate majors. It is, in that case, translated into another binary between practical career paths as communicators in advertising, journalism, and so on, and academic careers through graduate studies. Another important set of oppositions in both the department and the university are translated into dialogue and relationships between the university and its environmentthe city and its peoples, and in the parallel tension (identified in the Strategic Plan) between access and excellence.11 These are dominant themes in President Axworthys vision of the mission of the university, which I discovered when I read his policy paper upon first arriving here.12 I have since tried to follow these themes as they actually play out in concrete projects for various populationsfor example, in the reconstruction of borders through architecture, or the movement of programs into inner city neighborhood. Or they are embodied in intellectual forums like programs on aboriginal governance or urban studies which bring native peoples in as
11
Referring to the Universitys mission statement, the Academic Plan Update (June, 2009) states the University
acknowledges the tension between the two dominant values that define the University. First is the tension between University and College. Second is the tension between access and excellence. In both instances the University strives to achieve both. The University of Winnipeg defines itself as an institution that offers a superior university education within the intimate atmosphere of a college as well as access with academic excellence (Executive Summary).
12
Lloyd
12
teachers, advisors, consultants, and spiritual presences. I am filled with admiration for the boldness and imagination of these efforts, including the innovative ways they are being financed. These same tensions and borders are really constitutive for this department. It was originally organized, in its first year program and tutorial centres, to support the mission of access, work for which it has been praised in reports and national media. As Vice President Corlett told me, this department gets it! The members understand and share a passion for these goals and an understanding of the patience and inventiveness it takes to achieve them. They are frequently called on, or volunteer, to participate in teaching experiments and projects that link university and its communities in what Tracy Whalen calls liminal spaces, But the very conversion of the Centre for Academic Writing into a department, with professorial faculty who are increasingly expected to do research, brings this commitment potentially into question. When a department with this commitment develops an undergraduate major and, now, proposes a masters degree, some faculty are skeptical that it will neglect or diminish its commitment to the first year program, especially to the difficult teaching challenges of working with nontraditional students. I suspect they have similar worries about the universitys investments in research and encouragement of graduate studies. But it is not access that characterizes the mission, according to Dr. Axworthy, but the relationship and balancing act between access and excellence. He means by that, in part, that members of the community will be given every possible opportunity to learnand to teachand then, they will be supported to meet the universitys high standards for graduation. But it means a lot more than that. It means, I think, that the university expects the delivery of education for nontraditional students, in the Tutorial Centre and first-year writing, as well the provision of a requirement in academic writing for all students, will also be held to standards of excellence. In turn, what that means in a scholarly community is that its pedagogy will be informed by principles and research findings from the facultys disciplinary resources, that it will continually assess and examine its program critically, and that some faculty may take the program as a site for their own research. The same is true of all levels of the curriculum. The department has a distinctive profile of strengths and interests that fits the institution like a glove, in its institutional dynamic between access and excellence, academic study and practical application, and the dialogue between university and local communities. In imagining what it can build on this foundation, the department has one enormous advantage. I
13
was thinking one day about how many of the widely separated Canadian scholars scattered throughout the country would give their eyeteeth to have a local intellectual community, which is exactly what a departmental structure is designed to afford, if it is able to strategically build a faculty that will engage with one another, in part, over its common pedagogical commitments. The faculty of the department has this, so rare in Canada; it just needs to appreciate, exploit, and enhance its possibilities. The department recognized this what would be called in rhetoric a kairotic moment of opportunityin setting up the Fulbright project. Its members undertook to examine critically its current programs, its legacy from a unique past, how it fits with the institution, what is its place in the Canadian landscape. The first-year writing program, with its tutorial centre, is sixteen years old; the undergraduate major is eight years oldas far as I know, neither has been substantially revised since its inception, although both have evolved. Each is ripe for some critical scholarly attention. The Masters proposal in Rhetoric, Writing and Public Life is still under development, and new projects constantly present themselves in serendipitous ways. At the same time, I have perceived a depth of thematic connections in its publications and course designs that could be woven into a stronger web in order to articulate the curriculum vertically and its intellectual traditions and perspectives horizonally. I will have some observations and suggestions on these matters, but more importantly, the Fulbright project has modeled a process for pursuing these goals through historical and contextual research, conversation, and engagement with scholarly and pedagogical materials. This is how I learned to know this department and, hopefully, it has been learning about itself along with me. I am actually of French and Anglo-Canadian heritage on one side of my family, and I think I will leave here feeling ever after a little more Canadian.
14
From Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Composition as a Human Science: Contributions to the Self- Understanding of a Discipline (Oxford UP: 1986), ix-x.
Features that could define composition as a discipline: an inexhaustible topic (a subject of adequate scope and permanent interest) a connection with, or relevance to, the intellectual life of the culture principles for differentiating itself from other fields with similar or overlapping interests a mission: a moral imperative, social responsibility methods that are mutually compatible and complementary with respect to assimilation, testing, critique, and use social/territorial motives and professional/institutional settings where it has an accepted role (journals, conventions, departments, programs) an educational system for reproducing the discipline, providing scholars with a sense of professional identity and common points of departure irony, self-reflexivity about its own projects and discourse
15
Appendix
2
Summary
of
Student
Questionnaire
Findings
Dear Instructors and Professors of the Rhetoric, Writing and Communications Department, On May 12, 2011, I and 9 other students met with Dr. Louise Phelps. The intent of the meeting was to give her a better understanding of how the students in the Rhetoric, Writing and Communications (RW&C) department felt about the major. Prior to the meeting, I circulated a brief questionnaire (included below) to the students based on a discussion that Dr. Phelps and I had earlier in the week. The aim of the questionnaire was twofold. First, I wanted to give students an idea of the types of questions Dr. Phelps was interested in asking. And second, the questionnaire was meant to give her some basic information prior to the meeting so that she might be able to focus on particular areas of interest, given the short time she had with the students. The questionnaires, themselves were not anonymous, however, students understood that the information they provided to Dr. Phelps might be used (with identifying information removed), for the purpose of her report. After the meeting, Dr. Phelps suggested that there was an abundance of information in the questionnaires that she was not able (given the time constraints of her visit) to go through systematically. After we briefly discussed the ethical constraints, she suggested that I might go through the questionnaires systematically and summarize what the students had said. 13 students opted to complete the survey. I have summarized some information; however, I have also tried to quote students as much as possible without revealing their identity. For this reason, any reference to specific classes (which are taught by only 1 professors), or to specific professors themselves, has been taken out. I hope that this information proves valuable! Allison Ferry
Contents
The Questionnaire ..................................................................................................... 17 Summary of Findings.................................................................................................... 17 Age Range................................................................................................................. 17 Majors ....................................................................................................................... 17 Amount of University Completed............................................................................. 18 Discovering Rhetoric, Writing and Communications ............................................... 18 After were done ................................................................................................... 19 How our education will help us achieve our goals ................................................... 20 Looking back: How the program helped Alumni ..................................................... 20 Tutoring..................................................................................................................... 22 Additional Information ............................................................................................. 22 Reflection .................................................................................................................. 24
16
The Questionnaire
1. Name: 2. Age: 3. Major(s)/Minor(s)/Additional focusesie. if you have taken cognates in 1-2 other departments: 4. Amount of university and degree completed: 5. How did you get involved in the Rhetoric, Writing and Communications program? 6. What do you intend to do/what did you do once you finish(ed)? a. How do you think your education will help with that? b. For graduates: How did the program help you (or not) with what you are currently doing? For
Tutors:
1. How long have you been a tutor? 2. How and why did you get involved in tutoring? 3. Could you please briefly describe your tutoring experience? Additional
Information:
If
there
is
anything
that
you
would
like
to
be
introduced
into
the
conversation
with
Dr.
Phelps,
please
introduce
it
below.
Summary of Findings
Age Range
-9
students
in
early
20s
(20-25)
-2
students
in
late
20s
(26-30)
-2
mature
students
(1
in
early
60s,
1
old
enough).
Majors
-Because
the
survey
did
not
ask
students
to
specify
whether
they
were
taking
a
3
year
or
4
year
major
in
RW&C,
this
information
was
not
consistently
available.
-5
students
had
double
majors
-1
student
had
a
combined
major
-ALL
students
listed
having
an
additional
focusi.e.
they
had
selected
cognates
which
were
focused
primarily
in
1-2
different
departments
outside
of
RW&C
(some
students
referred
to
these
as
minors,
although
the
university
does
not
recognize
minors)
-All
students
were
RW&C
majors
-No
Joint
Program
or
Creative
Communications
students
filled
out
the
survey,
although
3
students
indicated
that
they
had
originally
intended
to
go
onto
one
of
these
programs
and
had
changed
their
minds
(See
Discovering
Rhetoric,
Writing
and
Communications)
17
The other disciplines students listed: -6 students listed English (specifically English Literature and Creative Writing) -2 students listed Linguistics -Other disciplines: Theatre, Business, Philosophy, Politics, Anthropology, Religion, History, Aboriginal Governance, Physiological Psychology, Chemistry
18
My original intention was to enroll in the joint communications program and eventually move on to study Creative Communications at Red River College. However, after developing interest in pursuing postgraduate studies (in both Communication and journalism), I changed my mind. General interest. Because I couldnt commit to the 2-year, full-time Red River Creative Communications program. I specifically took this course because I was on the fence on what degree I wanted to pursue and therefore I was taking the requirements for the Joint Communications Program. This joint program is what brought me to the university as I thought I may be interested in a career in broadcasting. It was in my first year that I met a student in one of my courses who discussed the Rhetoric, Writing and Communications Department and told me I did not necessarily have to venture over to Red River but could complete the more theory based degree at UW. Rhetorical Criticism was an amazing course which I felt spoke to my interests directly. I had always been interested in how people are persuaded and wanted to learn how to analyze that persuasion so I would know when it was directed at me and others, and how some people are able to hold power over others. For this reason I found advertising interesting, however, I did not believe that I wanted to be the one to persuade others (and therefore did not want to take the Red River Program). I became involved with the program based on recommendations through friends who are/were already in the department. I have also continued to take classes with my first year academic writing teacherwho teaches in the rhetoric department. I was a student at UofW with a focus on Business Admin, I took Academic Writing then, had., loved the class, hated business. Dropped out, came back once again, still in Business, still hated it, and dropped out for the second time. When I returnedI discovered that Academic Writing had grown into a department and I decided to change my majors, loved what I was doing and learning, and never looked back.
-7
students
indicated
the
careers
they
were
interested
in
pursuing
after
graduation
-2
students
wanted
to
pursue
academia
19
-3 students were interested in Journalism, Public Relations or Broadcasting. - Other interests included education policy and curricula, publishing and teaching English overseas
A deeper awareness of how modern texts seek to influence our lives and provided the tools with which to analyse them. Looking back on my experience in the program, it was the eclectic background of the various professors and therefore the wide range of discourse they drew their material from, that I enjoyed the most. I suppose that just about anyone would benefit from having studied, in some capacity, writing and communicationsI am no exception. I do wish, however, that my studies had provided me a clearer idea of what specifically Id like to pursue within the field. I learned a little about a lot, but I would have loved help narrowing it down to a particular stream or area of studywould make it easier when it comes to planning grad studies. Right now I'm a server so not hugely, although I have copyedited the menu and emails for my manager on request. When I serve the right guest my small talk is sometimes more interesting than it may have been in the past because I discuss topics I've covered in classes or things that I've read that I may not have otherwise read. It has allowed me to stand up for myself and protect myself and my co-workers from being taking advantage of by the major corporation that we work for. Being well written and well spoken can go a long wayI'm also a volunteer writer and do a college radio talk show so it helps with that from the confidence aspect as well as being able to express my ideas intelligently and being able to have intelligent ideas at all. Last summer I did promotion work for a music promotional company, I met the owner of the company through a class, and my education helped greatly with that job as I'm sure you can easily imagine. I am a much better writer. I have exemplary critical thinking abilitiesI feel like the Rhetoric program encouraged/demonstrated/rewarded/pushed the development of these abilities... [However]I made it through the Rhetoric degree at the U of W with only writing very short critical papers, aside from [specific instances] I felt like a cook who had only made one dish at a time before who had to prepare a multi-course meal. Id turn my attention away to focus on another dish and accidentally set something behind me on fire. I want to clarify and say that the very short papers gave me extensive preparation with a variety of different areasBut I just didnt get nearly enough practice writing long critical papers. To solve the issue: tailor the assignments differently so that students can write a long paper at the end of the term and (2) put this on the students radar, that if they are the kind of student who might consider grad school theyre going to want to practice writing a long paper before one determines their entrance/lack thereof into grad school...
21
A liberal arts education improved my analytical skills, and gave me a greater awareness of the forces at work in our global community.
Tutoring
-3
students
who
completed
the
survey
were
tutors
-All
had
1
or
more
years
of
experience
-2
alluded
to
the
frustration/shock
of
dealing
with
students
whose
skill
levels
were
particularly
low,
despite
having
completed
high
school
and/or
some
university
-2
mentioned
a
specific
interest
in
working
with
EAL
students
-1
mentioned
that
they
felt
it
helped
to
strengthen
their
own
writing
I
got
involved
in
tutoring
because
I
believe
that
effective
writing
and
communication
are
essential
to
a
meaningful
education.
I
recognize
that
I'm
privileged
in
these
areas,
and
I
think
that
I
am
making
meaningful
use
of
my
skills
and
time
by
helping
others
realize
their
capacity.
My
tutoring
experience
was
an
invaluable
part
of
my
understanding
of
the
critical
role
rhetoric
plays
in
our
lives,
how
it
can
be
used
as
a
bridge
of
understanding
between
cultures.
My
experience
was
a
positive
one
and
I
especially
enjoyed
tutoring
EAL
students.
Additional Information
2
students
responded
to
this
section
and
supplied
approximately
8
pages
of
feedback
which
was
focused
almost
exclusively
on
preparation
for
graduate
studies.
I
think
that
although
students
wanting
to
go
on
to
grad
studies
are
nurtured
and
mentored
by
professors
in
the
department,
the
course
offerings
are
limited.
There
needs
to
be
courses
that
challenge
these
students[I
can]
get
this
experience
through
reading
courses
(both
in
Rhetoric
and
other
departments),
however,
in
these
settings,
I
am
not
exposed
to
other
students
with
whom
I
can
discuss,
debate,
and
in
general,
learn
from.
Even
if
there
was
one
fourth-year
theory
class
offered
in
each
of
the
different
areas,
I
think
this
would
go
a
long
way
to
preparing
grad
students.
My
concernis
that
I
am
not
adequately
prepared
for
graduate
studies
in
Canadian
schools,
which
do
not
have
either
Composition
or
Rhetoric
as
their
focus.
While
I
do
not
agree
with
the
22
idea that this area should be seen as superior to the other aspects of the program, I do feel that Canadian Communications is a suffering area in the program. My CV [was/is] quite bare for applying to grad school, and it wouldve been helpful if the U of Wset up some opportunities to have something on there [for example] a 1 credit hour student-run colloquium, where we workshop each other and sometimes professors come in and talk about their research. If theyd set that up, the students could also take turns being the co-chairs, and that would help bridge into grad school for both the writing quality and the CV. I felt like I [was/am] writing in a vacuum a lot of the time at the U of W. My writing noticeably improved when I was given something to push off of that went beyond the classroom material. I feel like everyones got this on their radar for practical, community- based writing, i.e. the students who want everything they do to have immediate tangible consequences, but not all students are like that! Theyre not really doing justice to the students who are genuinely interested in academic knowledge for its own sake. After I was given 3 pages of Butler and Althussers essay, I was already a better student. I was able to contextualize and rhetoricize a situation and make more sophisticated moves and critiques in my work. Can they make an optional coursepack for students in the department who want to engage with theorists beyond the ones that fit into the immediate class? Even though my critiques of the theorists were pretty accurate, I was also very aware of how little I knew, and therefore absolutely needed the feedback from faculty to nod their heads or make a checkmark beside my sentence The students can step up their game and write better if the faculty put them in a situation where they can contextualize and rhetoricize; we just need to be put in more of those situations. It helped a lot when faculty spoke of their own work, especially stuff that they hadnt published yet because it provided insight into how the process of knowledge-creation worked. I dont think most of the faculty did this enough. It would also be helpful for faculty to make available their CVs so that students interested can go find their work (because it gives us more context and we can make associations from what they talked about in class to what was published, etc.) if [students read] each others work, theyll go OMG I didnt realize everyones first sentence began with In society today . . . We were often in a vacuum and couldnt see the dumb moves we were making. These are choices that students can self-correct if they can get out of the eye of the storm of their own workI dont think this should be done in class because there simply
23
isnt enough timebut the faculty can set up a space where interested students can help each other grow. I really want to discourage using the strong students to pull up the weaker students by constantly pairing us with them. Most of the time the weaker students I was paired up with were there because they just wanted to earn a degree and get a job, they didnt care about the knowledge for its own sake, and its such an enthusiasm-killer to be paired up like that. if theyre doing colloquiums, there should be one thats rigorous and requires extra reading for little reward other than to develop ones own work, and maybe there should be one for people who are more interested in the practical outcomes of their workthose are two very different attitudes, and it always seems to be the students interested in knowledge-for- knowledge-sake bending to the others who care only about practical outcomes.
Reflection
Generally,
the
students
provided
more
information
that
I
initially
thought
they
would
when
I
distributed
the
survey.
I
think
that
this
is
a
reflection
of
the
fact
that
the
RW&C
students
are
genuinely
interested
in
talking
about
their
experiences
with
the
department.
The
question
that
yielded
the
most
information
from
students
was
the
one
which
asked
students
to
describe
how
they
were
introduced
to
the
program,
while
students
struggled
more
with
questions
about
where
they
felt
the
degree
would
eventually
take
them.
This
might
also
reflect
one
of
the
shortcomings
of
this
survey,
which
is
that
none
of
the
students
who
partook
were
officially
part
of
the
Joint
Degree
or
Creative
Communications
program.
It
would
seem
likely
that,
particularly
in
the
Additional
Information
section,
responses
might
have
been
extremely
different.
In
spite
of
this
absencewhich
in
no
way
was
intended
to
suggest
that
those
students
are
unimportant
to
the
programwhat
the
survey
does
reveal
is
a
vital
community
of
students
who
view
their
time
in
the
Rhetoric,
Writing
and
Communications
program
as
the
beginning
to
their
academic
pursuits
and
many
attributed
this
to
the
passion
of
their
professors
within
the
department.
24
Appendix
3
25
26