Professional Politics:

Situating Composition Studies

English 5365 Summer 1999

Some people believe that this class should not be taught at the graduate level, since it technically is not part of what we have come to know as our "discipline". Yet I would argue (and will do so in this course) that the disciplines of Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication have come to include many of the politically-charged institutional practices we will be examining. In this course we will explore the political landscape of our profession, situating it first historically, then concentrating on current issues, particularly those affecting the emerging professorate in English. We will concentrate specifically on those who work with writing, but we will see them in the larger context of English Studies. The ultimate goal of this course, then, is to help prepare the graduate student in Rhetoric and Composition or Technical Communication and Rhetoric for the situations he or she will be likely to experience as an assistant professor in the discipline of English.

Course Requirements:

This course will be taught in a social constructivist manner; we will all be constructing knowledge through our private research, then sharing it with the classroom community. We will begin by situating the field of Rhetoric/Composition in the United States, then move on to an overview of how the political landscape has evolved (and what has influenced it). As a group, we will read and discuss some of the more recent political upheavals, and come up with a list of suggested topics to explore indepth. These topics will be assigned to group members, and each member will report on their selected topic, but not simply by presenting information, but by teaching the class for the entire period. Students will then select an issue to research and report on for a final paper.

You will be responsible for:

• Maintaining a reading response log where you respond to all of the course readings
• Teaching an issue or text to the class
• Participating in a class e-mail list
• Writing a research paper (or the equivalent) exploring one of the issues covered in the class

Readings

No textbook exists for this course, but we will pick and choose from a variety of sources to get a communal background. Then we will branch off, create new knowledge, and bring that knowledge back to the group. The following texts will be our starting points:

Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996.

 

Olson, Gary A. and Todd W. Taylor, eds. Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. New York: State University of New York Press, 1997.

You can consult the larger bibliography for more information. We will be discussing readings from a coursepack as well.

Possible Topics for Individual Presentation/Reports:

• Promotion and Tenure: what goes into a P/T document? How are successful documents measured? What should faculty (new and old) do to make this process easier?
• Administration: What kind of load is involved? Should new hires be administrators? How is administrative work valued? What are the consequences of administration? The perks?
• Use of Part-Time faculty: As an administrator in charge of hiring for FYC, how should you deal with the extended use of part-time faculty? What are your options?
• Working Load: What is a fair working load for the expectations of an institution? How many classes can one teach and still be a good teacher (and do research/publish)?
• Distance Education: Is DE worth the time and effort required? Who should be involved in creating and staffing DE courses? Whose responsibility is it to teach well at a distance?
• Where we fit into the institution: P/T decisions first go to the department, then to the institution. What do they value? How can you find out? How can you be both what your dept. wants AND what the institution wants?
• Valuing Work in Technology: Those who work "in the margins" (technology, writing center, WPA, and so forth) tend to have their work devalued by the institution at large. How can we do this important work AND still receive credit?
• Gender and Race and Age and Culture: Difference can be a problem OR and asset. How can we deal with difference in our profession, at the administrative level or pedagogical level?
• Assessment: How do we deal with assessment as teachers, as scholars, and as administrators?
• Collaboration: We teach it, value it in our pedagogy, yet are penalized for it if we do it in our own research. Should we be collaborating? How can we have our collaborative work valued?
• Hiring: What king of political orientation should you have as a job-seeker/new hire? What factors influence who is hired: Publishing? Presentations? Networking? School attended? And so forth.
• Theory vs. Practice: Which should you concentrate on? How can good teaching be valued? How do we reconcile this rift between Theory and Practice?