Expressivist Aesthetics and the Purposes of College Composition

I've briefly discussed a few of my concerns regarding the expressivist tendencies of some new media theorists; however, Geoffrey Sirc's article is the most explicitly expressivist I've read so far. He says (114), "I'm most interested in composition that has an ultimate poetic effect" while talking about teaching composition (rather than creative writing or graphic design). And he goes on to call for a focus on aesthetics in the classroom: "Our first aspect, then, to how we might use technology to achieve powerful ends with new media lies in aestheticizing the scene of composition in an idiosyncratic, obsessed way" (116). Hence, he envisions students as artists: "I want students--designers, now, not essayists--free for such associational drifts: entering things naively, without countless rehearsals; tying to capture a mood or vision" (121). This approach concerns me because I fear it will do little to prepare students for either college or the "real world." I appreciate any teacher who wants to teach their students passion for art, to teach them how to love something. However, I think that a purely aesthetic approach to composition is irresponsible.

I find it interesting that so much of the discussion of new media seems to stem from expressivism. We've heard arguments for this kind of composition pedagogy before from teachers who think that their main purpose is to facilitate their students' creativity and help them unlock their inner writers (now graphic designers). I, however, have a hard time buying into such arguments. That's not to say that I don't appreciate aesthetics. If I'm teaching texts by Milton or Shakespeare, I do so partly because I believe that they are examples of some of the greatest poetry written in the English language. I also do so because of how they reflect and challenge their contemporary social and political milieus, and they help us discuss how and why they continue to hold cultural value.

Sirc's argument for a focus on aesthetics is perhaps complicated by his own aesthetic: "It's important, I think, to have students work with lived texts of desire (rather than, say, the middlebrow academia of a Jane Tompkins or Mary Louise Pratt) in order to develop a passional aesthetic like Cornell's and Benjamin's" (117). The value placed on avante-garde art highlights it's ability to challenge, but perhaps also undermines the composition classroom's ability to give students access to a dominant discourse. Sirc argues that many modern composition teachers are basically curators; however, this assumes that teaching a dominant discourse necessarily perpetuates the hegemony. Can it not also provide awareness in order to challenge the hegemony? If we "let students use what they really care about and love (or hate) as the new subject matter in their work" (125), are we not somehow abjuring pedagogical responsibilities (not just institutional, but social)? I would like my students to enjoy what they are working on as well as be genuinely interested in it, but I'm not sure that that should be my highest priority.

Let me end with an example. Research shows that most students communicate with each other through text messages, but academics communicate primarily through emails. This has led some to suggest that we should start communicating with our students via text messages rather than emails. Wouldn't such a transition be a disservice to students in the long run? If we try to appeal only to their passions, how will they learn what they need to know?

Sirc, Geoffrey. "Box-Logic." Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logn: Utah State UP, 2004. Print.

The "Digital Imperative" and 21st-Century Audiences

J. Elizabeth Clark's article, "The Digital Imperative: Making the Case for a 21st-Century Pedagogy," focuses on using new media in the classroom, and I am particularly interested in her discussion of audience. She claims that "artifacts of student learning have the potential to become actual published products, or works that raise questions around the public/private split of contemporary writing" (29), yet I have concerns about new media's assumed ability to help our students negotiate this split.

Clark describes "Ally," one of her students who entered the class with a common student perception of classroom writing tasks: "She thought of writing as a performance for the teacher, but not as something that had a significant role in her own life" (30). And she goes on to describe the effects of assignments that use new media on Ally's understanding of audience: "Without the ePortfolio and her blog, Ally's work in the course would have been a series of disconnected assignments written for a teacher-peer audience. With the publication of her work on the ePortfolio and the blog, her work immediately changed focus, as she now had the ability to share her work" (30). While it's possible that Ally developed the deep understanding of audience described in the article, we should not assume that assigning new media compositions will concretize student conceptions of their audiences.

Clark's desire to expand student audiences beyond the classroom highlights an issue that Joseph Petraglia refers to as pseudotransactionality, which basically refers to the inauthenticity of classroom writing tasks that--no matter how the prompt frames them--are always directed at a teacher-audience. Ally's "ability to share her work" is supposed to be transactional in that Clark describes it as being directed at a "real world" audience, with real world consequences. However, my own research suggests that the kind of blog assignment described by Clark does not transgress the pseudotransactional classroom situation quite as easily as we might assume. In fact, out of the 19 students in one Freshman Comp class I surveyed, when asked if they had ever been assigned to write for an audience other than the instructor, 8 identified a blog assignment, 6 identified various other assignments, and 5 said they never had such as assignment. I had not expected these responses, and I was surprised because the 8 students who identified a blog assignment were referring to an assignment they had just completed two weeks earlier in that vary class. In other words, 11 of the 19 students did not appear to conceive of the blog assignment as one that asked them to write for an audience other than the instructor. While this is only one class, their responses agree with much of what I've read and discussed with fellow instructors.

Clark addresses this issue with her second exemplum student, whose online personal essay included specific details of illegal activities, which could have had serious real world consequences that the student apparently did not foresee. After describing the student's situation, Clark says, "students--and in fact most users of Web 2.0 technologies--have yet to fully understand the implications of living a publicly accessible life. Responsible digital literacy can only come from helping students to make conscientious choices about how to use technology conscientiously and critically" (31). I agree with this statement, and despite my criticisms of parts of Clark's argument, I think that teaching new media is a crucial aspect of teaching 21st-century audience awareness. After all, how else will our students learn to be more savvy about their Facebook privacy settings and why they should avoid posting pictures of their friends performing keg stands.

Having said all that, there are other ways to negotiate pseudotransactionality, some of which may actually be more effective than new media. A seemingly necessary component for students to recognize an audience external to the classroom is the reception of feedback from that audience. Other teachers who find blog assignments ineffective say one main reason is because many students think that, out of the multitude of blogs available on the vast internet, no one outside of the class is going to bother looking at theirs. Instructors can team up with one another to expand blog writing assignments beyond the classroom, but then they're only really expanding the pool of peers from which they can conduct peer review. Writing for publication assignments don't have to use new media, and if a student has a letter to the editor published in a local paper, then it really might be viewed by a larger (and/or more "authentic") audience than their blog would ever receive. Additionally, even if their letters aren't published, the editor's acknowledgment of receiving those letters could solidify the external audience to a greater extent than any blog comment.

Clark's article was published in Computers and Composition 27 (2010) 27-35, and in case the link to Petraglia's article stops working: Petraglia, Joseph. “Spinning Like a Kite: A Closer Look at the Pseudotransactional Function of Writing.” JAC 15.1 (1995): N.p. Web. 2 June 2010.

How "new" is New Media?

Anne Frances Wysocki's definition of New Media focuses on the materiality of texts rather than the question of whether or not they are digital. Her definition allows texts that are not digital to be considered new media, but it also seems to exclude digital texts that appear to lack a certain level of self-awareness. It seems to me that self-awareness is an important aspect of most compositions, and one that we should focus on in the classroom--after all, I want my students to be aware of their "writerly" decisions, regardless of the type of text that they are composing. However, Wysocki's definition seems to ignore the realities of intentionality and awareness reflected in at least some of what other people would consider new media.

One example of new media that often seems to lack the kind of self-awareness Wysocki's definition requires is Powerpoint. Powerpoint software encourages the production of multimodal texts, and it has been widely available since 2003. Because of it's seeming ubiquity in academic and business settings, Powerpoint presentations have developed their own genre conventions (backgrounds, length, number of slides, etc.), and while these continue to evolve and are not concrete constraints, they have created a kind of uniformity between most of the presentations composed with the software. When these conventions are combined with default settings and backgrounds (along with the other exigencies of the rhetorical situation), we can see how it is not at all common for Powerpoint presenters to be "aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight the materiality" (Wysocki 15). After all, students and employees alike often perceive Powerpoint as more of an obligation than a writerly choice.

Wysocki's definition of new media also seems to stress a kind of transparency that I am not convinced exists in much of what we or our students view as new media. Composers of new media, she suggests, should be forthright as well as self-aware: "Such composers design texts that make as overtly visible as possible the values they embody" (15). Perhaps composers who fit the rest of her definition would exhibit this quality in their work, but I'm not sure how well it applies to much of what our students consume on the internet. Apart from matters of honesty, my skepticism may simply tie back into the issue of self-awareness. If a composer is not aware of the values their composition embodies, then how can they make those values overtly visible? Perhaps, then, Wysocki's definition better describes a pedagogical aim than a material reality. We may want all of our students to develop and exhibit this kind of awareness; however, we have to be aware that much of what they consume--whether through YouTube, Facebook, or a Powerpoint presentation--probably does not exactly fit this definition.

Wysocki, Anne F. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logan: Utah State UP, 2004. Print.

Introduction

I'm a second-year MA candidate in English with a dual concentration in rhetoric and composition and literary history. My research interests in early modern drama and poetry include works by Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton. My recent scholarship includes work on the historiography of Shakespeare through an analysis of Alexander Pope's edition of The Taming of the Shrew, which set an editorial standard for the play that lasted over a century and continues to affect modern readings of it. Regarding Milton, I have been working on interrogating the role of chaos in Paradise Lost through indigenous decolonization theory. Concerning rhetoric and composition, my work focuses on audience theory, activity theory, and genre. Thus, my overall research interests focus on historical and political contexts, genre, and historiography.

I'm particularly looking forward to this class because I used to be something of an expert on pedagogical uses of social media, but I've become a bit rusty over the last year or so. Additionally, my interest in audience theory comes from working as an editorial assistant on a collection of essays on the topic, Engaging Audience: Writing in an Age of New Literacies. Hence, I'm eager to further explore the intersections of technology and rhetoric, and to see how they can enrich my teaching.