Lisa Blankenship, Seth Graves, Kate Eickmeyer, vol. 2 editors
Writing Program Spring Symposium, 4 April 2019
Where do the key concepts of Join the Conversation come from?
The content of the book is meant to complement the course goals for 2100/T. The book’s concepts draw upon decades of research in the field of Writing Studies. In some sense, the Reader provides us with the opportunity to reconsider curriculum to attune to current students, and provides a platform for us to consistently revisit, reassess, and revise.
What have other schools done?
Many schools require students to purchase a flagship composition and rhetoric text produced by academic publishing houses like Norton, Oxford University Press, or Bedford St. Martin’s. These texts are significantly more expensive than ours, and adopt a one-size-fits-all model for teaching writing. Other schools will use a reader as we have here—some incorporating mostly assembled texts (with permissions acquired and paid for) from outside locations, others (like ours) mostly written by individuals in the institution’s writing program. In most cases, original content in those latter readers is mixed with some previously published materials. We have acquired permissions for core materials to complement our own (such as passages of Andrea Lunsford’s Everyone’s an Author—the Bedford/St. Martin’s flagship text), and selectively chose pieces of writing and images by permission cost in order to keep the overall price of the book as low as possible.
Can I use a theme?
Absolutely! Our curriculum encourages the use of a semester-long theme for the course, and the Reader is designed to facilitate that design. The content of the Reader is limited to fundamental concepts of Writing Studies and meta-discussions of the writing, revising, and research processes. We still have the possibility to choose a theme and readings around that theme. Imagine the Reader as the foundation and framework for a house, and you design the interior and everything else based on your style and research and writing interests.
How do you imagine I’ll use it for writing assignments?
The Reader is organized by the three core assignments of the Eng 2100/T sequence, developed around the course goals. It can be remixed to your own style and interests, or it can be used by assignment and writing genre as we’ve envisioned it. We open chapters with holistic conversations about each mode of writing, then offer perspectives on the subject and writing that employs the genre by faculty, students, and other authors. Our hope is that the reader offers both content and modeling to analyze—and that its makeup will assist you in scaffolding your course and each assignment.
How do you imagine I’ll use it for reading assignments?
Our hope is that the Reader will bring Writing Studies into the classroom as a pairing with your course theme. Students, for example, may read an essay or literary text of your choosing, and use the Reader for discussion about the rhetorical process of crafting a paper based on your course texts
How do you imagine I’ll use it for in-class assignments?
The Reader serves to bolster meta-discussions in the classroom about language use—meaning it can serve both as a platform for discussion as a course reading, and as a platform by which activities are constructed to participate in the writing processes it presents. The Reader contains content and habits of mind useful for discussing planning, writing, peer reviewing, and revising stages of the writing process. It has sample essays for students and model essays from professionals. Though how you run your class is up to you, the Reader offers a variety of foundational texts to work with.
Will students understand the key terms and concepts?
We think so. We have found the material we are presenting to be consistent with trends in Writing Studies classrooms nationally. We acknowledge that some of the terminologies we introduce are unfamiliar to instructors as well as students, but we hope this text will serve as a common vocabulary between composition instructors at Baruch—one that presents Writing Studies as a field of study—while maintaining instructor autonomy.
What is a literacy narrative?
A literacy narrative is a personal essay that interrogates a person’s own interaction with language and other discursive acquisition. The term is more common to the social sciences, and very common in the field of Writing Studies/Rhetoric and Composition. The term literacy narrative implies how language and its use lies at the center of what we’re asking students to encounter in writing classes. For more information, see the Literacy Narrative Assignment handout included in this packet.
What do you want from me?
We are hoping that you incorporate the Reader as in your class in the fall. However, you can use it how you like—if you feel resistant to the way it’s presented, as well as the suggested trajectory of the course, feel free to tweak the individual arc of your class (we’d also love to hear about what you do in that regard!). We always hope you’ll write a piece for the Reader in future editions, and/or a piece for the Teacher’s Guide, and help us continually improve both.
What do you want from my class?
We hope that your class reads portions of the Reader and has open discussions about the writing process and rhetorical concepts presented in the text, forming a framework on which your individual course is taught, along with your assignments and your readings.
What resources are available to me for curricular development?
The Center for Teaching and Learning is an extraordinarily valuable resource on campus to help in all aspects of pedagogical and curricular development. You can schedule appointments to meet with CTL consultants and attend CTL workshops there. Visit their website at ctl.baruch.cuny.edu. Lisa and Seth are also available by appointment throughout the summer.