And just like that, the Spring semester has flown by and will soon give way to the joys of summer. Before we end, however, I'd like to take some time to outline the final capstone project I'm assigning to my first-year writing students to end our time together and draw everything to a cohesive close: … Continue reading Apocalyptic Turn/Sparking Change
Tag: rhetoric
A Blast From the Past
I've been reading a lot recently on literacy narratives, chronicles of time and transformation in which writers reflect on their past experiences reading, writing and communicating in conversation with others. I'm intrigued with what I might find myself writing were I to begin a literacy narrative project, especially considering my literacy, as it stands, is only just … Continue reading A Blast From the Past
Writing and Mindfulness
Writing and Mindfulness I first encountered meditation during the spring semester of my senior year of college. A group of twenty or so of us sat in a two-tiered circle, red and blue light shimmering inside from the interfaith center’s stained glass windows, as a philosophy professor/smiling mystic led us in breathing exercises. These exercises … Continue reading Writing and Mindfulness
Writing The Academy
Lots of work within rhetoric and composition has been put into examining the intersection of gender and writing in higher education over the past thirty years. I can't summarize it here, but instead I'll steer the mindful and attentive reader(s) toward the work of Gwendolyn Pough, whose published articles I've been moving through lately, and … Continue reading Writing The Academy
Go Left, Young Writers!
One of my favorite writers, the Depression-era labor theorist and literary organizer Mike Gold, called upon the young writers of his day to stand boldly against passivity, to dare to speak and make their voices known, to audaciously demand an audience and to demand that audience's attention. Gold writes "the best and newest thing a young … Continue reading Go Left, Young Writers!
Distance Learning Epistemologies
A reading of Elizabeth Losh’s 2014 book The War On Learning uncovers many interesting and provocative challenges on the trend toward “distance learning” popular among many institutions of higher education in recent years. Modern universities, which Siva Vaidhyanathan has characterized as being remarkably “willing to experiment” within realms of knowledge and content delivery, have in recent years taped … Continue reading Distance Learning Epistemologies
Dissenting Voice(s)
Here’s a small snippet of the final chapter of my MA thesis “Dissenting Voice(s),” in which I look at social media, Anonymous/Wikileaks hacktivism and the implications of intensified blending of the personal and the political: The human-tool interaction, in the case of social medias like YouTube, is one of publication, of announcement, of transmittal to some … Continue reading Dissenting Voice(s)
Comparative Media Studies
I’d like to address the topic of Comparative Media Studies, a field N. Katherine Hayles introduces early in her 2012 book How We Think and that she revisits periodically throughout the progression of her arguments in the book. Hayles draws on a variety of examples where Comparative Media Studies (CMS from here on) is integrated into a collegiate seminar, with … Continue reading Comparative Media Studies
Birth Of The Authors
The following is the abstract to JD Richter’s MA Thesis, written at the University at Buffalo: “Birth of the Authors: Digital Collaboration, Electrate Invention and the Dissenting Voice.” Abstract: Rhetorical invention occurring in the sphere of the social web increasingly takes on the form of collaborators working in tandem with one another to compose and … Continue reading Birth Of The Authors
Greed Is Not Good
It's a now-normal 21st-century anxiety, but it wasn't always like this. Perhaps it was my wide-eyed, dangerously-sincere reading of Don DeLillo's novel Mao II as a high school senior that did me in, but I've always harbored an uneasy fascination with cult of personality figures. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, even Steve Jobs, Jon Gruden, Elon Musk. It's a … Continue reading Greed Is Not Good
Jacob Richter 