I went to see Arrival last night. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that it fits into the subgenre of science fiction where scientists save the world in the face of aliens, panicked citizens, paranoid politicians, and trigger-happy soldiers. To be sure there are other kinds of contact movies (E.T. for example) where friendly... Continue Reading →
populating threshold concepts in writing studies
In our Teaching Practicum, we're reading Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. If you aren't familiar with it, it's an interesting texts with many contributors that seeks to identify some of the threshold concepts of our discipline where "threshold concepts" have some specific, though unsurprising, characteristics: Learning them is generally transformative, involving “an ontological... Continue Reading →
thinking with Manuel Delanda in rhetoric and composition
Perhaps you are familiar with the recent and excellent essay collection, Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition (edited by Paul Lynch and Nathaniel Rivers). If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it, but I'm not here to talk about it today. It's just the inspiration for the title of this missive, where I... Continue Reading →
the cognitive-media ecologies of graduate curriculum
I seem to have developed a recent preference for the term "cognitive-media ecology." It's not a term one finds readily bandied about, but it references a familiar concept or at least an intersection of two familiar concepts: media ecology and cognitive ecology. Though they are separate fields with the latter including a more constellation of empirical... Continue Reading →
making a graduate seminar pedagogy
For the first half of my career, I rarely taught graduate courses, but since I've come to UB, it's become a central part of my job, especially teaching our Teaching Practicum. In the last couple years I've become increasingly dissatisfied with what I'm doing, so I am resolved to change it. Basically I do what... Continue Reading →
students can't write and other slow news days
Making the Facebook rounds of late is this article that makes the titular observation that "Poor Writing Skills Are Costing Businesses' Billions." Huh. Maybe so. The article, posted a week ago, cites three reports on this situation... from 2004, 2006, and 2011. Maybe the situation hasn't improved. Probably not. I doubt anything systematic has been done... Continue Reading →
Slavoj Žižek on Objects
Slavoj Žižek offers the following recent critique of Levi Bryant and object-oriented ontology, which evoked a single question for me: What are we arguing about again? I think I get Žižek's argument. I don't think there's really anything new or unexpected in terms of an argument made from an idealist, Lacanian viewpoint. I understand he... Continue Reading →
What would a new materialist composition program be?
Sure, there are many possible answers, which is why this is "a," as in one of many, rather than "the." That said, we're familiar with plenty of other kinds of programs, classes, and pedagogies as they take the shape of particular theories, the strands that Fulkerson identifies: critical cultural studies, expressivism, various "rhetorical approaches" (argument-based,... Continue Reading →
On the future openness of the MLA
I'm writing today about two unrelated events--unrelated that is except in that they both concern the MLA. The first is the election of Anne Ruggles Gere, a rhetorician, as second vice-president (which means she will rise in two years to the position of president). The second is an open letter from Eileen Joy, medievalist and... Continue Reading →
