Welcome to the Parlor

At the end of teaching my first graduate course, I remember asking the students an inevitability ego-shattering question: “how do you think I could improve this course?” (aka “in what ways did my teaching suck this semester?”) My very gracious students gave some interesting (and only a wee bit ego-bruising) feedback. One student’s response stands out: “I think you should assign one or two books over the semester rather than a bunch of articles a week. The articles are hard to connect. I never really knew what you wanted us to do with them.” My response, without a second of contemplation, was something along the lines of: “I’m open to changing a lot of things about my pedagogy, but I’m not open to changing that.” After I finished the sentence, I was actually surprised by my impassioned reaction. After all, I knew exactly how she felt. A lot of my previous professors did the same thing, which is likely exactly why I do it as well. One of my favorite profs from my doctoral program was notorious for assigning seeming reading randomness. Her readings weren’t just a couple of articles, they were a couple of full articles, some parts of an article, and sometimes even a couple of paragraphs from an article. On several occasions, I remember her emailing us the night before class and telling us to read yet another article or another excerpt or another definition. At the time, I found it (not her, I loved her) extremely annoying. It wasn’t until later that I figured out what she was doing: she was mapping out a conversation in the field, providing us with voices and ways we could understand a topic of inquiry.

When I sat down to write this post, I had absolutely no intention of talking about readings in graduate courses or curricular decisions. But I felt compelled to do so after asking my students to read a long chapter from a book and 10 or so blog posts about digital rhetoric. I envisioned my students sitting in front of their computers or maybe in the library saying to themselves: “So much reading. So many different perspectives. So little context. Is she insane?” My decisions probably didn’t do me any favors in making a good first impression. But yes, there was a bunch of reading this week, likely the heaviest load we’ll have all semester. But I think it’s good. I think it’s great. I think it’s worth it.  Why? Because this, my friends, is what rhetorician Kenneth Burke calls the parlor. So welcome to the parlor, welcome to a space where conversations are held, perspectives are given, and knowledge is built, enhanced, and complicated.  Listening to these voices gives you a glimpse into what people are talking about when they talk about digital writing.

With that said, I’m thinking forward to class Thursday night. I’m hoping to engage in some good discussion about these readings. But man, we could talk about so much. These scholars offer up so many different lines of inquiry we could engage with, but which ones should we take up?

I set out to use this post as a way to provide some kind of discussion map for us, some things we may consider talking about. When I had this idea, a synthesis activity I do with my undergraduates immediately came to mind. So I decided to do the assignment, identify some discussion themes, and do some connection-making among and between the voices I hear in this parlor.  I initially planned to include some of the activity in this post, but it grew out of control and is definitely not suitable for a blog post. So you can journey here to check it out.

Oh PS, Daniel Anderson is amazing. If you haven’t checked out his work, you must.

PSS, the picture of my son above has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but I had to include it for a couple of reason: today was his first time in the snow; he looks kind of like Ralphie’s brother from A Christmas Story, and he’s too damn cute not to share with the world.