Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing: Disciplinary Spaces of Writing Studies

Disciplinary Spaces of Writing Studies

CASDW 2009David Beard

Department of Writing Studies

University of Minnesota Duluth

Overview• Local Context: Dept of Writing Studies

• Disciplinary Location: Disjunction• Disciplinary Location: Intersection• Disciplinary Politics: Division

• Polemic: Writing Studies

Local ContextDepartment of Writing

Studies1988-2008 Department of Composition

2008 Renamed Department of Writing Studies

Local ContextDepartments are not

DisciplinesThe Department of Writing Studies houses:•First-Year Composition•Advanced Composition (Professional Writing)

•Information Design•Journalism •Linguistics

Local ContextPrograms are Not

DepartmentsThe Dept of Writing Studies collaborates with:•English (with the MA in English, with emphases in [1] Literature, [2] English Studies, and [3] Publishing & Print Culture)

• Communication (in interdisciplinary initiatives in rhetorical studies)

Local ContextWhat, then, is Writing

Studies?We have achieved the dream: a freestanding department with autonomy in research, funding and tenure decisions.

At the same time, we are independent yet entangled, freestanding yet intersecting.

In 2008, we explored the limits: we sought a new BA in Writing Studies.

What is Writing Studies?

Strategies for Definition

Writing Studies is not…Writing Studies is…Writing Studies can

intersect with…

Writing Studies is not identical with…

Composition…

Composition is the “institutionally supported desire to organize and evaluate the writing of [student] writers and and to define it as an object of professional scrutiny.”

--David Bartholomae


Composition

We were a Department of Composition.

Our history with that term reduced our mission in the eyes of our colleagues.


Rhetoric…

The art of adapting ideas to people and people to ideas.

--Donald BryantThe study of how we use language and how language uses us.

--Krista Ratcliffe


Rhetoric…

Our colleagues in Communication teach oral and political rhetoric.

We use rhetoric as a field and method of inquiry, but the term was both bigger and smaller than what we are.


Literary Studies…

"[T]he traditional historical work of rhetorical and literary studies in recovering, editing, and interpreting major texts" (as well as new additions to the canon).

-- Charles Bazerman


Literary Studies…

The work of recovering, editing, and interpreting major texts may use methods that overlap our methods, but to different political, intellectual and cultural ends.


Literary Studies…

We do not suffer from what John Schilb has called “canonoia.”


Library & Information Studies…

“The LIS Domain shows at least five major groups of subjects: [1] Information retrieval and bibliometrics, [2] Digital library, [3] information architecture and usability, [4] marketing and management of libraries, and [5] archives and records management.”

-- Hassan-Montero and Herrero-Solana


Library & Information Studies…

LIS studies texts as artifacts located in institutions, accessed by readers and acting on human social relationships. And cataloging. And database design. And a whole slew of professional issues.


Document Studies…“A document [is] an idea committed to material form such that it could be used.”

--Annelise Riles“Documents help prove facts… are representative of facts … constitute facts by the very fact that they are read or used… [and] are creative of facts within the context of their being read or used.” -- Ronald Day


Document Studies…

Scholars in Document Studies are more interested in how documents are used and organized than in how they are created.

Writing Studies has its own brief history

We cannot trace ourselves back to Plato (the textbook narrative).

We cannot trace ourselves to Fred Newton Scott or the dissolution of the pedagogical section of the MLA.

Writing Studies has its own history

We cannot trace ourselves to the walkout at the NCTE that led to the NAATPS (later NCA, the Communicationists’ narrative).

We cannot trace ourselves to the creation of the CCCs or the publication of Corbett’s textbook (another compositionist’s narrative).

History is not the source of our identity or legitimation.

Writing Studies is……structured like similar disciplines with similar titles.

•American Studies•Women’s Studies•Library & Information Studies•Communication Studies•Cultural Studies

…with Writing as the Object

Writing Studies is…

“Writing Studies is the study of writing--its production, its circulation, its uses, its role in the development of individuals, societies and cultures.”

--Charles Bazerman,

Writing Studies studies Writing…

…as a practice.…as an object.

…as a technology.…as inextricable from human

social institutions.

Writing …as a practice

We connect [1] the humanistic study of rhetorical pedagogy with [2] contemporary, empirical, social scientific and linguistic study of writers in action.

Writing …as an object.

We study the historical picture of writing in its [1] public, [2] personal, [3] civic, [4] educational and [5] professional forms.

Writing …as an object.

“Anything written using any medium that has survived complete or in fragments … [including] original and copied writing on papyrus, wood, wax, or animal skin or writing on or in pottery, masonry, stone or metal… man-made objects of aesthetic, practical, religious or other cultural significance”

--Robert Gaines

Writing …as a technology.

Writing [1] is a technology and [2] is mediated by technology.

Writing …as a technology.

Writing: “A technology for creating conceptual frameworks and

creating,sustaining, and performing lines of thought within those frameworks, drawing from and

expanding on existing conventions and genres, utilizing signs and symbols, incorporating materials drawn from multiple sources, and taking advantage of the resources

of a full range of media.”--Andrea Lunsford

Writing …as mediated by technology.

“The overwhelming pressure of mechanization evident in the newspaper and the magazine has led to the creation of vast monopolis of communication.”

-- Harold Innis

Writing …as mediated by technology.

“Viewers experience themselves as being ‘socialized,’ as belonging to a kind of electronically constituted society.”

-- Bolter & Grusin

Writing …as inextricable from

human social institutions.

We seek to understand We seek to understand writing within the writing within the networks of social networks of social institutions: institutions: •academic settings academic settings •workplace contexts workplace contexts •civic life. civic life.



““By discourse venues, I mean By discourse venues, I mean places culturally associated places culturally associated with purposive communication, with purposive communication, including rostra, legislative including rostra, legislative assembly areas, courts, assembly areas, courts, theaters, temples, salons, theaters, temples, salons, schools, libraries, festivals, schools, libraries, festivals, and other public and private and other public and private locations.”locations.”

-- -- Robert GainesRobert Gaines



We study the roles that We study the roles that writing plays in shaping writing plays in shaping the writer, the reader, the writer, the reader, and the community.and the community.



For example, we interrogate claims For example, we interrogate claims that print technology was that print technology was responsible for the dissemination responsible for the dissemination of "the blueprint" for "nation-of "the blueprint" for "nation-states, republican institutions, states, republican institutions, common citizenships, popular common citizenships, popular sovereignty, national flags and sovereignty, national flags and anthems.”anthems.”

-- Benedict Anderson -- Benedict Anderson



"The dispersed people… would never "The dispersed people… would never meet, never see most of the places in meet, never see most of the places in which their 'imagined' compatriots which their 'imagined' compatriots lived, and never know anything about lived, and never know anything about the millions of individuals whom they the millions of individuals whom they envisioned as their community… Reading envisioned as their community… Reading the stories of their nations in the stories of their nations in schools, literature, and newspapers, schools, literature, and newspapers, individuals came to identify with individuals came to identify with public communities that were vastly public communities that were vastly larger than the local worlds in which larger than the local worlds in which they lived their daily lives" they lived their daily lives"

-- Lloyd Kramer-- Lloyd Kramer

Writing Studies can intersect with…

Professional Writing . Scientific and Professional Writing . Scientific and Technical Communication . Technical Communication . Journalism . Information Design & New Journalism . Information Design & New Media . Media Ecology & Print Culture Media . Media Ecology & Print Culture Studies . Library & Information Studies . Library & Information Studies . Literacy Studies . Studies . Literacy Studies . Composition Studies . Rhetoric . Composition Studies . Rhetoric . Communication Studies . English . Communication Studies . English . Cultural Studies . Literary Studies . Cultural Studies . Literary Studies . Cognitive Psychology & LinguisticsCognitive Psychology & Linguistics

Writing Studies is:

--a coherent disciplinary formation

--with a coherent object of study

…as grounds for an undergraduate major.

Writing Studies is nonetheless rocked by

divisions:

…humanistic vs. social scientific …techne vs. episteme…professional vs.

academic

If I can share these If I can share these arguments with you…arguments with you…

…at this conference……at this conference…

I hope to learn more I hope to learn more about the about the

disciplinary disciplinary configurations of configurations of

Writing Studies north Writing Studies north of the Minnesota of the Minnesota

border!border!

To contact this presenter, email [email protected]

Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing: Disciplinary Spaces of Writing Studies

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