Brooke and McIntosh

Brooke, Robert, and Jason McIntosh. "Deep Maps: Teaching Rhetorical Engagement through Place-Based Education." The Locations of Composition. Ed. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. Albany: State U of New York P, 2007. 131-149.

Brooke and McIntosh suggest that having students draw deep maps is useful as a pre-writing/brainstorming activity, especially in terms of getting students to engage in place-based writing and address civic matters in real writing projects. They write, "Initially, writers need to become accustomed to seeing themselves in a place, that is, they need to become aware of the various ways location (literal and mental) creates their understanding of landscape, culture, class, race, and gender, and surrounds them with local issues and local possibilities" (132). Writing about place is a starting point, they say, toward project-based civic writing. The student becomes personally invested in place. Similar to what I've been calling a pedagogy of person-in-place. Mapping is "an exploratory moment that supported a personal context for place-conscious writing" (140). Place is part of rhetoric: "where to locate one's argument" (147). "Once that link is made, then a whole new energy for writing becomes possible--and a whole new energy for shaping the state of the places we will live, and the kinds of places we can help those locations become" (147).