Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines (WAC and WID) represent both opportunity and challenge to traditional writing programs. Opportunity, because they can demonstrate the value of our research and the expertise of our instructors to other parts of the university, potentially earning us new allies and deepening respect for our departments and programs. Challenge, because they inevitably involve giving up control, to stakeholders from other disciplines who might not be inclined to give us the benefit of the doubt. Implemented and run carefully, such a program can convince others in the university that our pedagogy is valuable and our funding justified. Implemented poorly, such a program can convince others in the university that they can do our job as well as we can, and leave them convinced our funding is wasted. For good or for bad, these programs represent an unusual opportunity to showcase our work to parts of the university that typically do not encounter it.

Such an opportunity structures and animates Mary Soliday’s Everyday Genres: Writing Assignments Across the Disciplines (2011). Part of the NCTE’s Studies in Writing and Rhetoric series, the book articulates and advocates an understanding of WAC/WID programs through the lens of genre. Soliday’s consideration of genre and its value as a frame for WAC/WID programs is of tremendous use to WPAs and writing researchers, but what truly enlivens her book is the real-world situation that Soliday recounts. As Soliday explains, in the late 1990s, there was a call for higher standards from administrative leadership at the City University of New York (CUNY), a public university system made up of seventeen colleges. The Board of Trustees enacted a junior-year college literacy test and eliminated remedial writing classes. Crucially, they also  funded this new program, making real change practically possible for those who would work the most to implement it. Drawing on this funding, the university hired a cohort of writing fellows, drawn primarily from post-coursework PhD students, and a WAC director for each campus (18-20). It is in the latter role that Soliday served at City College, one of the most prominent schools within the system.

Soliday’s experience at City College demonstrates both the challenges and the rewards that I discussed earlier. As might be expected with a broad new program implemented via fiat from above, many community members at CUNY were initially resistant to the WAC initiative. This resistance stemmed both from those with writing expertise and those from other disciplines. As Soliday says, “some English teachers were uncomfortable working closely with outsiders who either challenged their expertise or required too much time to collaborate with (or both)” (22). This reference echoes, I imagine, fears held by many of us within composition studies. The fear of wasted time is a constant for many people, but particularly for academics, as the unstructured nature of time that should be spent on research makes spending it elsewhere a seductive possibility. The fear of interacting with scholars from other fields is also common, given the possibility that such scholars would be unconvinced of the value of what we do, or out and out skeptical of it. This resistance was matched by that of faculty members, some of whom “dismissed, sometimes abruptly, [the fellows’] attempts to build partnerships” and who “expressed disdain for both WAC and the fellows” (21). Yet despite these initial problems, Soliday and the CUNY WAC initiative were a success. The book tells their story.

This concrete, real-life example of the CUNY WAC initiative provided by Soliday is perhaps the book’s greatest strength. This kind of experiential and narrative-driven explanation can provide insight and understanding in a way that purely theoretical work might leave at a permanent remove. Soliday’s theoretical and empirical exploration here is impressive, but it is made markedly more moving—and the book markedly more powerful as an informative and entertaining text—by the way in which she grounds that exploration in anecdote and story. Many academics have attempted this kind of a narrative-scholarly synthesis, but frequently that these efforts fail, as finding the necessary balance is difficult. But Soliday handles the challenge with aplomb.

It helps that Soliday’s experience was, ultimately, a positive one. CUNY’s WAC program became a valued part of the school’s curriculum. This acceptance was the result of many hands, including the writing fellows, the WAC administrators, other members of the administration, English faculty, and sympathetic faculty from other departments. But a key aspect of this success was the focus on genre, and in particular, on genre as a communicative act. The concept of genre has, at times, been the subject of criticism, based on the superficially convincing logic that genres are necessarily limited and artificial constructs that obscure more than they reveal. If we imagine genre to be a set of discrete and limiting categories into which we attempt to fit our acts of writing, then indeed, genre is a subject worth criticizing. As Soliday says, “in the university, genres are often isolated from the social worlds that produce and sustain them” (84). But she defines genre far more helpfully and usefully. Soliday frames genre as both the product of, and a subject of, teacher talk—the way instructors and professors share expertise, requirements, expectations, and conventions between each other. “[S]ituated learning theory powerfully links a genre to the social experience that makes the genre meaningful from the start,” she writes (73).  Rather than a set of external guidelines that constrain the realm of the pedagogically possible, genre in Soliday’s terms is an emergent quality that stems from teacher desires as communicated socially. This social communication amounts to a kind of metagenre that informs and conditions genres themselves. Thus understood, teaching genre becomes not a chore that involves restricting student freedom but a rhetorically alive act of creation, one involving teachers and students in a communal creative process. Soliday writes:

situated learning theory powerfully links a genre to the social experience that makes the genre meaningful from the start. It explains why the invention strategies and sequenced or linked assignments WAC specialists bring to the disciplines are so useful for writers addressing new audiences about new subject matter. Further, the theory justifies why students in college need direct and ongoing exposure to talk about prompts, models, and drafts with particular audiences…. (73)

In this philosophy, genres are not constituted of assignments but rather dictate assignments.

This social understanding of genre involves its own tradeoffs and concerns, of course. It’s important to remember why genres tend to get defined in one-size-fits-all, deracinated terms in the first place: because instructors and students often require definitions that can be ported from one context or scenario to the next. Consider the textbook industry, which must wring profits from its books in a crowded marketplace. A company like Longman or Pearson can’t help but publish books that treat genres as set forms, at least to a degree, because they must be able to sell books to students at elite private colleges in Connecticut and those at open enrollment public universities in New Mexico alike. Limits of applicability across contexts extend to the book, as well. Soliday’s advice is well taken, but like all that is drawn from individual, specific contexts, it may not be applicable to all who wish to draw from it. The downside of the contextual, narrative nature of a book like Everyday Genres is that the same naturalistic and real-world nature that makes the book inviting threatens to exclude particular readers. All things considered, Soliday does an adequate job of transcending the particular context of her experience and research. One of the most effective tools she employs in this effort lies in the appendix, which contains actual writing-focused assignments from a variety of disciplines. These include anthropology, education, philosophy, art, and music. Such direct models help to concretize Soliday’s theoretical considerations of genre and social practice.

But while Soliday’s definition of genre invokes the natural, it expressly does not invoke the untaught. Soliday counters other researchers in arguing that a genre can be imparted to students through explicit instruction in a classroom context. Here, Soliday addresses one of the many tensions or conflicts she identifies in what instructors seek from students. Soliday locates the resistance to formal instruction of genre and other writing aspects in instructors’ tendency to think back to their own learning. “Many professors subscribe to this apprenticeship model of learning based on their own learning,” Soliday writes; “they did not receive explicit guidance, but they figured out what their readers wanted and succeeded” (101). But this expectation of student self-direction did not stop professors from complaining about student lack of genre knowledge. “[I]f students acquire genre only through immersion,” Soliday writes, “this process appears insufficient to their teachers, who continue to join WAC programs hoping to improve their students’ grasp of disciplinary genres” (7).

This is, admittedly, a nuanced stance of Soliday’s: that genres are themselves natural phenomena that should be understood as the consequences of real-world social practice within a given discourse community, that nevertheless can be taught through formalized instruction. I am inclined to believe Soliday in her contention that this tension—between the natural definition of genres as communicative practices and the necessarily artificial teaching of those genres—but I wish she had been a bit more upfront in defining this as a tension. Soliday is perhaps not explicit enough in acknowledging that her interest in students learning about real-world, natural genres rather than the fake genres invented in schools might seem at odds with her enthusiasm for teaching them in a school context.

A bigger problem, for me, is a lack of consistency in definition, of both content and process. My consistent concern when reading this (generally excellent) text had to do with the essential topic of the book: where, exactly, doe genres begin and end? Given the subject matter and title, it’s a very relevant question! Soliday’s intelligent, useful definition of genre as a social praxis has a downside: it’s frequently hard to tell where genre ends and a particular discourse community begins. If genre is the product of communicative acts and social agreement, what distinguishes it from any other social convention? Indeed, many would argue that it’s precisely the fact that genres are more static and certain than the shifting and conditional reality of social relations that makes them useful. Students, frequently unable to navigate the communicative norms of discourse communities to which they don’t yet belong, often require distinct rules and boundaries such as the kind traditional genres often employ. What’s more, this lack of clear definitional boundaries extends to Soliday’s project itself. I have said that the narrative style of the book is one of its strengths, and as a book, it is. As a research study, it’s far less beneficial. To be honest, having read the book, I am not entirely sure that I know what kind of a study is presented. Narrative research is legitimate research, and I respect the methodology, but Soliday does not seem to regard her own work as narrative in nature. Soliday mentions having conducted ethnographic research in the past (21), and in some ways Everyday Genres appears to be based on ethnographic research. At other times, the research presented appears to be a case study, or a series of case studies. While I can live with some amount of slippage between methodologies, I would like to have more information to adequately assess the type and method of research.

All in all, though, these are minor complaints. Soliday’s book deftly combines personal narrative with theoretical backing, and does so in a way that provides clear, consistent advice to instructors and administrators. The short book format suits her purpose ideally, giving her the ability to expand on her story and her ideas in a way that would not be possible in the space constraints of an article without the slackness and padding that is often found in typical monographs. The result is an intriguing, nimble text that demonstrates that theory, practice, and pedagogy are not distinct and separable elements but part of a continuum of human understanding that exist to reinforce and benefit one another. By speaking to consistent anxieties in a way that draws on real-life experience to dictate best practices, Soliday has provided a very useful guide for WPAs and composition scholars.

Soliday, Mary. Everyday Genres: Writing Assignments Across the Disciplines. SIU Press,  2011. Print.

I remember way back in sixth grade when my shame first came to light. In my school district, you attended K-5 at one elementary school (and how I wanted to stay there forever), then there was a separate school for sixth grade, a junior high school for seventh and eighth, and the high school. Why the sixth grade gets its own building has never been perfectly clear to me; I suppose it helps keep the junior high kids from beating on the sixth graders, just as separation keeps the high schoolers from giving the junior high kids the beatings they so thoroughly deserve. (I found high school to be, all for all, a lovely experience, but junior high was the pit of despair.) In any event, in sixth grade they were forever telling us that things had changed and that school was becoming a different animal. One of the major aspects of that, they stressed, was taking notes.

The note taking was very, very dear to their hearts. Everyone was required to have a three ring binder with separators for each class. They’d check to see that we had our binders incessantly. Some teachers physically checked our notes, which was problematic for me: I hated taking the notes. It felt artificial and forced, largely because it was. That would have been fine if I actually got anything out of the notes. But instead, they actively got in the way of my learning. The inevitable result would be that, as I worked as a busy little stenographer, I wouldn’t be mentally present for the actual lesson. I would be so intent on getting everything the teacher was saying and writing on the board that I would fail to actually understand. I’m someone who has pretty good recall, and particularly when I have actually made the mental connections that an instructor is asking me to. For me, that’s always been a far more reliable way to learn than to try to piece together what the point was from notes after the fact.

This dynamic has remained with me ever since– through high school, undergrad, my MA, and now in my PhD. Luckily, at the grad school level, no one has been giving me a hard time about it. But I still do feel a bit alienated in that my learning style is so different from many of those around me. My peers generate an incredible amount of notes, whether in informal jotting and personal shorthand or in formal systems like outlining or mind mapping. I’m glad it works for them; it just doesn’t work for me. There’s also an aesthetic element to this, at least when it comes to books. Whenever I borrow a book from a colleague, they’re inevitably marked up with highlighting, marginalia, and notes. It hurts my soul to see books so defaced! (Even though I recognize the perfect legitimacy and personal utility of this for others.) And I have a special distaste for those who mark up library books in this way. Again, if a passage or insight found in a book is worthwhile to me, it will either imprint on my brain, along with a general idea of where that part is found, or it won’t.

That extends to the production of texts. I have attempted to use outlines and similar tools in composition, but it just doesn’t work. The way that I write is… I write. My composing style is as idiosyncratic as anyone else’s, but it all happens internal to the document. I can’t plan a document outside of starting to write it, and that’s true of a 250 word blog post or a 30 page academic article. (Generally, I write out various ideas with some idea of where they have to go in the finished product and arrange them accordingly, and I usually work from the middle out.) This means that a lot of productivity software is useless to me. I have Scrivener, and I use it sometimes simply for the ease with which I can access PDFs and use them to split screen as a I write. But mostly, it’s just Microsoft Word, which I am one of the only human beings alive to genuinely like, apparently.

My suspicion is that this no-note-taking aspect of my persona as a writer is nature, not nurture. I certainly feel like an alien when I observe my peers and their note taking. If nothing else, it doesn’t stop me from being prolific. I write 10,000-12,000 words in a typical week, between my blogging, academic work, and personal writing, with weeks of 15,000 or more words not uncommon. As for quality, others will have to judge.

• Pass my exams! Naturally. We have a 24 hour exam and a 7 day exam. The 24 hour exam consists of answering five essay prompts of 1,200 words or less. Each prompt corresponds to one of our five core courses: Rhetoric of the Classical Period, Rhetoric of the Modern Period, Rhetoric of the Postmodern Period, History and Theory of Composition, and Empirical Approaches to Composition. Then, the 7 week exam consists of writing a ~20 page essay on a question we each choose from a set of possible prompts. The exam process is, obviously, a nerve-wracking time, but many have gone through it in the past. My program has a “pass with distinction” designation, but honestly, I just want to get them done.
• Develop French reading and translation skills. I have yet to pass my language requirement, and hope to do so by taking (and passing!) a translation test in the fall. I am purchasing a French reading book and a French-English dictionary, and I have access to some French language learning software. The language test is something of a hoop to jump through, but I love the French language and I can’t wait to take a deeper dive into it. Plus, my goal is to do some translating of Simone de Beauvoir as practice.
• Submit, submit, submit. I have a number of articles that I’ve been poking away on that I need to continue to develop. I really feel like I have something with several of these ideas, and I’m not the type to be overconfident about such things. The trouble is knowing what to prioritize, what to work on first and to be most aggressive about sending out. One way or the other, I am writing, polishing, and submitting at least three articles this summer.
• Deepen my understanding of computational linguistics. Although I am not a linguist, and computational linguistics is just one of the many areas of interest of mine, I’ve been looking for a chance to learn more about various software packages for computerized analysis of corpora. I am particularly intrigued by CLAN from the Child Language Data Exchange System. I am working with it now as I put the finishing touches on one of my final projects for this semester, but my application is quite limited. This summer, I would like to have a chance to really dive into the manual, and to play.
• Read, read, read…. I have such a long reading list that I know I won’t get to half of it. Orality & Literacy by Walter Ong for sure. Rereading Parmenides by Heidegger. Reading V by Thomas Pynchon. Definitely reading Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill. And countless academic articles, and inevitable blog posts, and essays….

So much to read, so much to learn, so much to know.

Las Vegas has been… well, it’s not my favorite. I doubt I’ll ever want to return. No insult to anyone who lives here and enjoys it, and of course I have seen the same tiny sliver of the city that every tourist does. I don’t mean to paint with too broad a brush. But the Las Vegas strip and tourist scene are decidedly not for me. My ethos simply doesn’t mesh with that part of the city, with that context. I’m not sure if it was a mistake to have the conference here; I actually love the idea of holding academic conferences at places that are a bit more fun. But I’ve now had my Las Vegas experience, and don’t need to experience it again. I did take the casinos for $200 or so.

And now time for a long bus ride back to Indiana.

I know, very well, that there is more to writing than prose. But I also know that prose matters, that it has beauty and power, and that our disciplinary identity depends on teaching it. It amazes me to read and hear people continuing to make the argument that we should value multimodal or non-traditional compositions; that war ended long ago, and the victory for the multimodal has been complete. Read the journals! That’s all that’s getting published, work on multimodality and digital literacies. This conference is full of presentations about these subjects. And I value that, I recognize their importance. I would consider it pedagogical malpractice not to introduce some multimodality and digital composition into my writing classes. But I don’t want to move so far from prose that we don’t discuss the best ways to teach it, or confine it to marginal status through neglect. Nor do I think that we can justify our funding or defend our autonomy without demonstrating the centrality of traditional text-based writing to our field.

I know that this sort of language inevitably makes it sound as if I am denigrating the research or pedagogy of scholars who work and teach in less traditional modes and media. That is not my intent. My intent is to point out that it’s exceedingly hard to find panels at this composition conference that directly reflect on composition in the traditional sense. I think that’s a mistake, on a variety of levels, and a shame. Because I value prose; I think prose is important; I think prose matters.

That institutional anxiety is mirrored, I’ve found, in the scholars themselves. One thing that I realized about the field long ago is that no one feels like they are at the center of it. Nobody feels confident that what they are doing is valued by the field writ large. There are degrees within this, of course. As a quantitative researcher, I can point to a lot of arguments that explicitly deny that such research is appropriate for the field. (That attitude, in my estimation, is fading.) But it seems like almost everyone, to some degree or another, feels like they are an outsider, and that their work is marginalized. Perhaps that’s the consequence of such freedom to self-define: when only you can define your field, you always wonder if you really belong.

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 Vegas for the first time, and excited to be among my people. I’ll let you know how the experience goes!

Just for fun! A little chat about The Great Gatsby with my brother John.

I’m taking

Rhetoric of the Classical Period: One of Purdue’s five required core courses, this historical and theoretical overview of the the classical period of rhetoric traces the history of rhetoric from its foundations in ancient Greece through to the early medieval period. Major figures include the Sophists; Socrates and Plato; Aristotle, whose work (for good and bad) still defines much of rhetorical study; Cicero and Quintilian, the great Roman orators; St. Augustine; and Ramus, something of a forgotten man to most people, but someone whose views were extremely influential on argument and education in the European tradition. Major topics include the argumentative modes, kairos and chronos, the topoi, and many other topics defined in ancient rhetoric. When most people think of rhetoric, they’re usually thinking of the subject of this class.

Empirical Approaches to Writing Research: Also a core course, this class is a broad overview of conducting and evaluating research on writing and composition. The class explores quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods, with attention paid to research techniques like the case study, ethnography, and experimental designs. Attention is paid to ethical issues in the conduct of research, with a special focus on the new issues of ethics in conducting research on Internet sources. The course also explores the theoretical and episetmelogical issues and controversies regarding research methods in the field of composition.

Seminar in Writing Programs Administration: A key course in my WPA secondary area, this broad overview addresses the pragmatic and scholarly concerns of a writing program administrator. The course intends to provide students with some of the competencies and understandings necessary to run a writing program in the 21st century. Topics include assessment, core curricula, freshman composition standards and practices, navigating the administrative concerns of the modern university, digital and online course management, budgeting, and more.

Comparing First- and Second-Language Writing: The course I know the least about, and the one I’m most intrigued by. An ESL/Applied Linguistics course, the class examines the empirical differences between writing produced by native writers and that produced by L2 writers. Most second language writing research is interested in production and process– that is, observing how L2 writers produce texts in a way that is similar to or different from native writers. This process orientation, important in part because of the pedagogical imperative, can obscure the difference in the actual written texts themselves. This course (as I understand it) examines extant research on consistent differences in L1 and L2 writing and considers methods, research questions, and applications of such research for the future.

Can’t wait!