First Week Part 1

The danger in writing a response instead of sharing thoughts in class is that there's no one here to stop me. It's just me, this computer, and two barking Doberman dogs drooling outside my door waiting for the opportunity to jump on me. Theirs is the sort of love that leaves bruises.

Thus it is that I offer my first response on three of the articles. I have read "The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing," "An Answer to the Cry for More English," and "Introduction" to The Origins of Composition Studies. I lifted the substantial heft of "Where Did Composition Studies Come From" and decided I better get my thoughts on these first three shared before they were lost amid a flurry of dog barking, my roommate yelling, and my own proclivity for distraction by shiny things.

I think I would like to first comment on the nature of blogging as opposed to writing a formal response paper. It feels different somehow. A long time blogger, I have been aware of a difference in my voice in a blog versus academic writing, but usually that voice is similar in response papers as those tend to be more informal. But for some unfathomable reason, writing this for public consumption via internet offers significantly more stress than just churning something out for Dr. J's eyes only. I don't know if this would be true for students of Composition; most of them weren't alive when the original Batman came out and think The Matrix is okay "for its time". It's entirely possible then that blogging would seem natural and, perhaps, a better medium for the writing required in English 101. I'm undecided--perhaps in the last post of the semester I will revisit the idea.

The disclaimers being issued, therefore, two of these three articles, Hill's and Bereton's, made me feel like I sat through one of my father's three hour long discussions of football and computers--I didn't really care about the knowledge; I was pretty sure I didn't want as much of it as was shared, but now I've got it anyway. It isn't a discussion about the history of the field I object to; I'm actually a huge proponent of knowing where things came from and how we got to where we are today, but Hill's essay seemed redundant after Bereton's introduction and Bereton offered surface level knowledge at best.

What can be learned from the history of Composition? What mistakes have we failed to rectify? What mistakes are we currently making? The Bedford seemed to deal with these questions significantly better. In all fairness to Bereton I had the impression many topics were discussed at great length later on in the book, but I think an introduction should to more than just listing the facts. I find it a little bit ironic that a piece on the history of Composition is badly composed. Oh the grammar is all there, and he's very informative, but he gets no marks for style. It isn't that I need special effects and a John Williams' score to make my homework "entertaining" but I do want to feel like the scholar I'm reading cares about what he's writing. I'm not interested in reading twenty pages of a fact laid out and disseminated for assimilation. This is an interesting and important topic; Bereton doesn't begin a conversation with his reader he offers them a snapshot of history, but even that seems lacking.

First of all, what is "feminist rhetoric"? Yes I just read A Room of One's Own so perhaps I'm sensitive to this phrase (thinking of women and fiction) but what does feminist rhetoric have to do with Composition theory? Do women speak/write differently? Do we acquire language differently? Is there a particular method of teaching writing that applies only to women that has been ignored throughout history? It seemed from the article that just because something was by or pertaining to women it must, therefore, be feminist. I disagree. If he was meaning the rhetoric developed by the Suffragettes that has been expanded upon by feminists since then that is something different. But still, I would probably call it civil rights rhetoric, or rhetoric of equality. I'm an unapologetic feminist, but I take issue with everything having to do with women being labeled feminist as if everything about us is as different from males as our reproductive organs. Oddly enough both men and women use language to speak and write.

I found the Bedford a much more useful and informative read. The history was short but helpful, the discussion about the 70's to the present was incredibly useful in spurring on my thoughts about my own personal pedagogy, and they loved on Bakthin. I'll admit it, I am a shameless Bakhtinian, but I honestly do feel his theories are indispensable to the teaching of Comp. The Bedford offered an unbiased look at history and some incredibly helpful critiques of the present. Instead of just telling me what we've done wrong it offered reasons and explanations. Perhaps I feel this way because the Bedford discussed the past in relationship to the future, something I always regard as important.

Doubtless the issue here is that Bereton's introduction was aimed at much different goals than the Bedford and what I, as a reader, am demanding is unfair. I acknowledge that and maybe, with further thought and consideration, I will change my mind. But for right now, I'm gonna do it anyway.