I come to the Conference on College Composition and Communication expecting to be depressed about many aspects of the field. I’m used to that. Nothing makes me sadder, though, than the number of scholars who display distaste for the very subject our field is oriented to, or was: the teaching of writing. I know, very […]
Continue reading →One of the more well-known and frequently-cited quotes in rhetoric and composition is Janice Lauer’s definition of rhet/comp as “a dappled discipline.” We are famously diverse, in terms of methodology, epistemology, theoretical assumptions, types of classes taught, departments we belong to, institutional structure…. So it’s typical, here at our biggest shindig, for someone like me […]
Continue reading →Greetings from the 2013 Conference on College Composition and Communication, in sunny Las Vegas. I’m here to present my paper, “The Syllabus as the Enemy of Public Writing,” on how assessment measures typically fail to reflect the theoretical and pedagogical commitments of public writing classes. I’m excited to be presenting, excited to be in Las […]
Continue reading →This coming semester (which begins on Monday, eep!) will be my last required set of courses. After this spring, I’ll have completed my five core courses, finished two secondary areas, and taken my linguistics requirements. I will still take classes next year; that’s quite common in my program. I’ll be taking a class in statistics […]
Continue reading →“Schoolchildren who are asked to trace early overseas voyages on identical outline maps are likely to become absentminded about the fact that there were no uniform world maps in the era when the voyages were made. A similar absentmindedness on a more sophisticated level is encouraged by increasingly refined techniques for collating manuscripts and producing […]
Continue reading →Sorry I’ve been so out of the loop. Here’s a description of some current research of mine, taken from something I wrote in a different forum. I’m currently engaged in a research project investigating the composition processes of second language learners, in this case Chinese and Hindi L1s. I am utilizing corpus linguistics software to […]
Continue reading →I’m very excited to say that my field’s flagship journal, College Composition and Communication, has just published an article by my mentor and advisor at my MA institution, Robert Schwegler. Coauthored with his frequent collaborator Chris Anson, the article describes exciting research into eye tracking technology and suggests possible applications in pedagogy. I truly believe […]
Continue reading →“So far as the social sciences are concerned, all this means that their oft-lamented lack of character no longer sets them apart. It is even more difficult than it always has been to regard them as underdeveloped natural sciences, awaiting only time and aid from more advanced quarters to harden them, or as ignorant and […]
Continue reading →As a mere consumer of journalism, I tend to think that what’s necessary in journalism isn’t just an adversarial attitude but a universally adversarial attitude, that is, skepticism towards all parties in a given dispute. That doesn’t mean that you try to achieve a phony balance by pretending that the facts support all parties equally. […]
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