Response to Karen Kopelson's "Sp(l)itting Images; or, Back to the Future of (Rhetoric and?) Composition"
Before I read an article in CCC, I like to read the editor’s intro of it in her “from the editor” note at the beginning of the journal. Oddly, although Kopelson’s essay seems like one that will generate a lot of conversation (as evidenced, in part, by Derek’s choice of this article for the carnival), Holstein doesn’t mention it in her editor’s letter. An oversight? I can’t tell.
I was interested in reading Kopelson’s essay in part because I am one of those folks with a “conversion narrative.” Perhaps because of that, I am very pro-pedagogy. I taught for the last thirteen years at a community college, where pedagogy is valued over knowledge in most disciplines, and English most especially.
I have thought a lot about the “pedagogical imperative” since I began teaching FYC in 1993 and have had three recurring thoughts about it:
1. The pedagogical imperative makes it very difficult for us to move away from a FYC model, and there are some interesting arguments that we should move away from that model. Sharon Crowley was the first to make me realize that we really need to consider the possibility that FYC doesn’t work, and if FYC doesn’t work, we really need to consider moving away from that model. Perhaps distributed composition instruction through WAC programs or something besides the ubiquitous two-course first-year sequence. . . . but then what do all the comp instructors do?
2. The pedagogical imperative protects FYC in English departments to some degree. In my experience, most English departments are literature-based departments and most faculty are literature faculty who, like almost everyone else in the academy, want someone else to teach their students how to write. The pedagogical imperative helps trap composition folks in a “service role,” but it also ensures that there is a service role, and hence, positions in composition. Without a FYC requirement, not too many students would take lower level writing courses. In other words, the pedagogical imperative, I think, helps ensure the existence of many crappy jobs. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but I do know that as a woefully exploited graduate teaching assistant and an even more woefully exploited adjunct, I was grateful to have a crappy job teaching writing.
3. The pedagogical imperative is probably largely responsible for the fact that composition classrooms look very different from classrooms in other disciplines, and I think this is a good thing. Comp classes tend to be more interactive and more reliant on small groups and less reliant on lecture than classes in other disciplines. I have some questions about Kopelson’s data pool. Her findings are based largely on survey responses from graduate students at “two large and long-established doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition.” That’s not much information for me to judge the legitimacy of the data. How many surveys were returned? What are the two programs? Yes, I understand the need for anonymity of the two programs, but more information, such as location, urban or rural, size of programs, etc. would help me gauge how representative the respondents are. I think that the kind of sweeping conclusions Kopelson makes really need to be backed up by a sample from more than two programs.
I was surprised that in her discussion of the “one-way interdisciplinarity” of comp-rhet (see, I always put comp first, and actually, I often forget to even mention rhetoric), she mentions the tension between lit and comp people, but doesn’t mention what seems to be a small but growing trend of independent writing units.
I found Kopelson’s discussion of the “one-way interdisciplinarity” to be the most compelling part of her essay. I think she’s right in her analysis that while comp-rhet uses theories from many different disciplines, other disciplines don’t use our theories. I like the way Kopelson puts it: we have “little to no interdisciplinary influence.” More of a focus on rhetoric and issues beyond the classroom could be a way to establish interdisciplinary influence. I would like to see Kopelson or someone else follow up with a full length essay on this topic.
(Tangential thought: I’ve often thought that comp people actually have more in common with social scientists that with lit people. My dissertation, on peer response practices in a FYC class, certainly had more in common with a social science dissertation than with a literature dissertation, relying on ethnographic observation, case study analysis, and grounded theory methodology.)
I think it’s important that we not lose our interest in pedagogy. As long as FYC exists, I want people who are interested in and motivated by pedagogy teaching it. But I don’t see any good reason to keep FYC and the pedagogy of FYC as the only focus on comp-rhet, I just want to be sure it remains a focus. Because Kopelson’s findings are based on only two graduate programs, it’s hard for me to believe that the pedagogical imperative is a disaster for graduate students in comp-rhet in general, but I do think she makes a logical case for expanding research into rhetoric and non-pedagogical areas.
I like the point about composition classrooms looking different. It is
hard to say just how much that model influences other areas in the academy,
but it does seem like composition studies has matured into an area that
does the undergraduate studio/seminar well. I'm reminded of Cosgrove and
Barta-Smith's _In Search of Eloquence_ as a study that looks at how
composition faculty can promote productive interdisciplinary conversations
about writing at the institutional level. I had the impression that
Kopelson had something grander in mind--something, perhaps, on the scale of
comp/rhet scholars doing work that would be cited in, say, sociology,
education, or communications. But do we really know how much this happens?
I've also been trying to think of examples where newer disciplines have
more prominent and portable scholars, and all I can come up with is some of
the stuff from visual studies and, perhaps, some of the stuff in new media
and technology studies that drifts fairly smoothly across old disciplinary
boundaries.
blogarama
