Entering The ConversationThere have been numerous articles that discuss first year composition and the ever changing landscape of the role of the instructor in such courses. While some scholars, such as Irene Clark, Gerald Graff, and Joseph Harris, have argued for a classical method of instruction that privileges argumentation and thesis driven writing assignments, it is questionable whether such instruction provides a model of writing that aligns with expectations outside of the academy or allows for students to engage on a personal/individualistic level with a given text or writing assignment.
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The Issues |
Peter Elbow in “Some Thoughts On Expressive Discourse” argues that the academy disallows writing that focuses on individual expressivism as it causes reductive thinking and writing, yet I argue that such assumptions are problematic. There seems to be an assumption that by constructing an “original” thesis, students are thinking critically (Clark 181), yet this negates the idea that students thesis is often framed by their instructors prompt/writing assignment. The canonical tradition/model of learning is not inclusive, but rather, exclusive, as Ian Barnard in Upsetting Composition Commonplaces contends that composition teachers focus upon “clarity, agency, and intent,” yet such ideologies are perpetuated only within higher education (or rather, the frame in which these terms are used is different within higher education.)
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The Project |
For my mid-term project, I had been concerned with illuminating the gap in the literature/rhetoric of video games in regards to avatars and how they either provide, or restrict, agency and identity. For this final project, I have decided to further this questioning of identity, or the expression of one’s identity, thought academic discourse. To fully understand the landscape that I am discussing, I will first provide a framework by which composition courses are traditionally presented, then move into providing some critiques this discourse using Aristotle, Susan Sontag, and various other scholars and literary theorist, and then move into practical examples of student centered writing/assignments. Rather than privilege the standard academic essay and the ideological apparatus surrounding this genre, I argue that we should allow for a more interdisplinary approach that destabilizes the traditional hierarchical frame of higher education.
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