As always in academics, the gender question deserves attention, and our class certainly spent some time talking about women and their place or role in composition (as well as ownership of a room of her own). While we did not really apply much of our conversation to Reynolds' essay specifically, I think we did hit on some good points of the value of then different perspective women bring to the classroom, and how many different perspectives in turn can be utilized in the classroom to create an affect or dialogue.
Coupling with the discussion of discourse communities from last week, different cultures or different people groups deserve a voice, and it seems to me a platfrom like first-year composition would be a great place to experiment or merge groups together. Since there could be such an emphasis on different kinds of writing assigned in class (think Winsor), students might be more compelled to speak on these different topics and thereby putting their underlives aside. I know Dr. Kemp says talking about the seven "hot topics" is a death sentence in the classroom, but does this apply to cultural topics like a woman president or male nurses? While Reynold was speaking more about feminism as a pathway to agency and change in the classroom that defeats the normal parameters of a patriarchal society, I cannot help wonder if inclusion of "feminist ideas" could be a good way to stir up the students and garner interested responses from them.
Hey Sally, I like your blog title. Dr. Rice has us commenting on the opposing (arch nemesis!) class's blogs today in class, so I am visiting yours.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'm also interested in what it means to talk about "hot topics" in class. Especially this semester, I am eager to get my students interested in the rhetoric around them--really interested, not just fake-interested. But what I am finding is that even within the realm of "hot topics," my students' underlifes (underlives?) vary so substantially that I can't even get them all interested in Jon Stewart, let alone female presidents.
I do know that the analysis of rhetoric in general does not seem to be a "hot topic," collectively. So they do share THAT underlife haha.
It is interesting how different a take your class took on Reynold's article. We focused less on feminism and more on the value (or lack there of) of interuption. We all agreed that women can gain agency in different and better ways.
ReplyDeleteDoes the "hot topics" create a good discussion though? Most the time when things like that are discussed in classroom it gets heated, not everyone agrees, and it divides them. On the other hand, it could create passion behind their writing, but even in my own writing I get preachy and less scholarly when writing about "going green" b/c I get so idealized. These topics can easily promote things like "EngFish" in the student's writing.
ReplyDeleteFeel free to jump classes and comment on my blog @ http://scottuptmore.blogspot.com/ -y'all seem to be approaching things in a different way than we are in our section.