History Bump

So ProfB, I've been giving this project some thought, here and there, and I've jotted down a list of what I think would be groovy topics to cover from a historical perspective (they may be too broad). First, I thought to research something that involves women, since you and Tyra made me believe that women are undervalued in rhetoric and comp studies I thought specifically about African American women. I want to know what thier contributions were/are to comp & rhet. Then I just thought about some other topics that I'm interested in. What follows is a tentative/possible list of topics; (I'm not sure if they are historical topics):

--Memoria: The Forgotten Key, Allowing Access to Information Technology Through Composition
--The Solitary Journey of Literacy: A Self-Reflective History
--20th Century African American Women Rhetoricians and their Contributions to Composition Studies
--Feminist Discourse on Pedagogy: African American Women Access to Composition Studies
--Comparitive Survey of 19th and 20th Century African American Women Contributions to Composition Studies

You are definitely on a trail here. Look on the readings list at the Gilyard and Royster articles (they're assigned for late in the semester); they'll give you some ideas about where to go/what to do. Also, take a road trip to the library and browse the issues of the *College Language Association* journal.

I will certainly do that. Thanks for the info.

Currently I'm thinking about a project that involves the recent history of rhetoric as told by Composition and Speech Communications. I'd like to investigate the similarities and differences in the histories as these two fields develop out of English, one as a seemingly rented mule used to limit access and the other on a path to a discipline of its own in an era of decreasing spoken public discourse. I'm not sure where I'm headed with this, but it's curious to me that people like McLuhan and Postman are taught in Comm. Studies but seem to disappear from the map in Comp. Maybe I'm trying to figure out rhetoric by exploring the difference (or differance) in how it is employed to write the histories of these two fields that came from the same discipline.

Maybe I just need to find a focus. *shrug*

Questions:
-Is the definition of/study of rhetoric different between Speech Comm. and Comp.?

-How do the histories told within each field help to define the field?

-How is the history of each field studied (primary readings, compendia, practice, theory, second-hand accounts, etc)?

-Who are the seminal people in each?

-Is there a place for McLuhan and Postman in Composition?

(The last would probably be a favorite. I'm currently musing about several crucial figures in education: E.D. Hirsch, I.A. Richards, B.L. Whorf, McLuhan, and Postman. I'm not sure that the first three would count as under-theorized in Comp., but I could be wrong. There might be others you could switch in or add.)

Okay. So a pressing question will be *how* you'll investigate the questions you want to answer. That will help you choose between them.

Possible projects are as follows:

1) An exploration of transnational feminism as method. This will involve charting scholarship and demonstrating how scholars both claim, and don't, this wide ranging set of practices as method and theory. Of course, I would attempt to show how this method could/can benefit comp/rhet as well.

2) Looking at alternative research and historical methodology (i.e. Benjamin, White, and Kristeva) to show how composition can use these methods as a both methodology for historical research and pedagogy for writing instruction.

*I hope* that I can manage to perform the methods with which I am working in the projects. But this is a very preliminary hope, so we shall see.

thinking about...
exploring how to integrate african-american rhetorical traditions in a comp classroom in a way that goes beyond our field's attempt to diversify its pedagogical approaches by merely assigning works authored by folks from marginalized groups

means that...
if we were serious about culture and its role in the teaching of writing, we would have to revisit standards and assessment practices

so...
this project will require a foray into the history of standards and should include a discussion of standards as gate-keepers

putting the same thing everywhere in hopes of landing it in the right place...

Course Project interests
My primary interest in this class is the issue of how we understand the methodologies of other disciplines from which comp research methods are borrowed, and if/how those understandings do or don't lead to an organized way of doing and evaluating the research that results.

Our earliest reading and discussion addresses the question of how
research is done in comp, and two things are clear from that opening:
1) The framework within which research is conducted can be organically developed within the discipline or adapted from the accepted approaches to problems in other disciplines, and
2) the strongest approach to research includes a thorough understanding of the field in which data resides combined with a rich research programme: a fully articulated theory, coherent and usable methodology, and range of appropriate methods.

Among the project topics suggested for this course, the one that corresponds most closely to my interest is:

"Analyzing and synthesizing the methods and methodologies of selected composition historians. In addition to textual analysis, this might (in the case of living historians) involve conducting interviews."

projects I'd be interested in working on with others:

2)
Editing Porter Perrin's dissertation: Perrin, Porter G. "The Teaching of Rhetoric in American Colleges Before 1750." Ph.D. diss., University of
Chicago, 1936. I can provide a copy of this.
3)
Tracing the history of plagiarism injunctions (including how they define plagiarism and represent the student author and the source text?) in composition syllabi, composition handbooks, composition textbooks, or institutional policies.
4)
Setting up an archive of the SU Writing Program that would be accessible to researchers.
5)
Compiling an annotated bibliography of selected texts for composition historiography
clo

Hi Becky,
I was wondering if you could offer some guidance here. I am interested in the language politics concerning Spanglish, but I have no idea if there even is a (discourse/composition)history or trail that I could follow. Any suggestions?

Becky,
My knowledge and language of composition is limited so the projects listed above feel out of my reach. However, I have always had a passion for people's stories and love the idea of interviewing. What about a project that puts together (through a series of interviews) the stories of the current faculty in the S.U. CCR program? I think it would also be interesting to include interviews with students and perhaps those who have graduated from the Ph.D. program.
This may or may not contribute to the method/methodology goal.

Two other projects of interest that I have carried over from last semester:
1) the separation between faculty and the "dirty" student body...
2) and a continuation of your work noting the roots of composition history programs closely tied to the history of racism, discrimination and attempted assilimulation.

Which project do you think would be most useful to the goals of this course?
Thanks,
Vanessa

-Initial thought on my course project-

I want to compile an annotated bibliography of selected composition histories on ESL.