Hesford, Wendy S. "Global/Local Labor Politics and the Promise of Service Learning." Radical Relevance: Toward a Scholarship of the Whole Left. Ed. Laura Gray-Rosendale and Steven Rosendale. Albany: State U of New York P, 2005. 183-202.
Hesford reviews the implications of the globalized and corporatized university, including consumerist models of curriculum and pedagogy, calling upon her audience to interrogate how ASL accepts/rejects exploitative labor practices. ASL provides labor as well as value for both higher ed and community agencies and we should be aware, Hesford writes, of how specific programs impact labor and material realities. E.g., she explains how her students provided volunteer labor to a shelter that had formerly relied upon public moneys. Do ASL programs facilitate decreased state funding for social services? Further, one year the shelter failed to garner a grant for funding labor during the summer (when it felt the lack of student labor). Hesford wonders if her students would be better off protesting at the state capital or continuing to provide the services/labor. Unpaid interships at private corporations effect local economies, providing free labor for the company and taking paid work from an employee. ASL, likewise, enters into labor-based relationship with worksites. Further, the service work remains feminized--a dynamic we often fail to question. Being reflexive isn't enough, for reflexivity doesn't necessarily address these material relationships.
Showing posts with label material rhetorics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label material rhetorics. Show all posts
Monday, August 20, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
Coogan, b
Coogan, David. "Service Learning and Social Change: The Case for Materialist Rhetoric." College Composition and Communication 57 (2006): 667-693.
"The promise is not just to make good citizens but to enable student-citizens to write for social change" (667). Actual production of rhetoric is too often neglected in favor of analysis/consumption of rhetoric by ASL programs. Coogan argues in favor of a material rhetoric model where students produce actual texts: "not just a case for rhetorical activism in service learning but a case for rhetorical scholarship in the public sphere" (670).
His material model is one of ADVOCACY: discovery, analysis, production, assessment. This process starts with getting out into the local context, inquiring into context, analyzing material conditions, producting rhetoric and evaluating efficacy. Coogan describes project in Chicago Public Schools to illustrate this model.
"The promise is not just to make good citizens but to enable student-citizens to write for social change" (667). Actual production of rhetoric is too often neglected in favor of analysis/consumption of rhetoric by ASL programs. Coogan argues in favor of a material rhetoric model where students produce actual texts: "not just a case for rhetorical activism in service learning but a case for rhetorical scholarship in the public sphere" (670).
His material model is one of ADVOCACY: discovery, analysis, production, assessment. This process starts with getting out into the local context, inquiring into context, analyzing material conditions, producting rhetoric and evaluating efficacy. Coogan describes project in Chicago Public Schools to illustrate this model.
Coogan
Coogan, David. "Counterpublics in Public Housing: Reframing the Politics of Service Learning." College English 67 (2005): 461-482.
ASL, Coogan says, provides an opportunity to at once challenge perceptions of 'city' and 'other' when we frame ASL as "a jumping-off point for addressing community issues" (462). Reflection, yes, but action too--an examination of how the "private" (personal selves/individuals expressing themselves discursively) and "public" (civic spaces with all their material realities) ... "inform each other in the communities we wish to serve" (462). The discursive and material intersect in the realm of the "counterpublic"--where various agents construct oppositional posititons to convince "outsiders to think or behave differently about issues" (465).
Reframe politics of ASL such that we avoid 'personal growth' mode, which neglects materiality and social analysis and fosters "naive identification with the other" (476). Give students a space to engage in counter-public discourse, which is both rhetorical (tell stories, use language) and material (via argumentation about real issues and lived experiences). Use a "Christian love ethic that takes the invidiual (and individual development) as the primary unit of analysis" (480).
ASL, Coogan says, provides an opportunity to at once challenge perceptions of 'city' and 'other' when we frame ASL as "a jumping-off point for addressing community issues" (462). Reflection, yes, but action too--an examination of how the "private" (personal selves/individuals expressing themselves discursively) and "public" (civic spaces with all their material realities) ... "inform each other in the communities we wish to serve" (462). The discursive and material intersect in the realm of the "counterpublic"--where various agents construct oppositional posititons to convince "outsiders to think or behave differently about issues" (465).
Reframe politics of ASL such that we avoid 'personal growth' mode, which neglects materiality and social analysis and fosters "naive identification with the other" (476). Give students a space to engage in counter-public discourse, which is both rhetorical (tell stories, use language) and material (via argumentation about real issues and lived experiences). Use a "Christian love ethic that takes the invidiual (and individual development) as the primary unit of analysis" (480).
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Robbins
Robbins, Sarah. "'Writing Suburbia' in Pictures and Print." Writing Our Communities: Local Learning and Public Culture. Ed. Dave Winter and Sarah Robbins. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2005. 88-92.
Robbins presents a lesson plan for teaching her first-year writing students to create photo-essays using PowerPoint. Her approach is documentary, an attempt to engage "material and visual culture" (89) in a writing-about-place pedagogy. The project is interpretive and analytical but also key for Robbins is that students engage in the production of texts, as opposed to staying in the consumption range. That is, they're reading their cities but also writing them. Her assumption is that "proactive citizens recover, critique, and create community texts that reflect the dynamic values of local and larger communities" (89).
Robbins presents a lesson plan for teaching her first-year writing students to create photo-essays using PowerPoint. Her approach is documentary, an attempt to engage "material and visual culture" (89) in a writing-about-place pedagogy. The project is interpretive and analytical but also key for Robbins is that students engage in the production of texts, as opposed to staying in the consumption range. That is, they're reading their cities but also writing them. Her assumption is that "proactive citizens recover, critique, and create community texts that reflect the dynamic values of local and larger communities" (89).
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Marback
Marback, Richard. "Speaking of the City and Literacies of Place in Composition Studies." City Comp: Identities, Spaces, Practices. Albany: State U of New York P, 2003. 141-155.
Marback theorizes our relationship with cities when we do civic work. We write cities and also represent cities, which do not necessarily have a voice of their own (drawing on Beauregard and the literature of urban planning). But we need to balance "the force of rhetoric against of the weight of material conditions" (142). Marback sees ideology--"a space between subject and object" (143)--as the domain for achieving this balance. We analyze objects (like cities) and speak for them and represent them but we place too much faith in "discursive intervention" (145) and not enough emphasis on material conditions. 'Rhetoric' blinds us to the realities of the 'material.' So we should find "the provocative ground of place making, where actions, attititudes, objects, spaces, values, and words intertwine" (147). He cites Detroit's own Heidelberg art installation as an examle of place-making's potential. The H. project intervenes in civic debates about Detroit and also changes the conversation in affirmative, creative ways. Juxtaposition of art, rhetoric, public debate, and Detroit's realities. "...all is not language" (148). The H. writes the city and intervenes in its materiality.
Marback theorizes our relationship with cities when we do civic work. We write cities and also represent cities, which do not necessarily have a voice of their own (drawing on Beauregard and the literature of urban planning). But we need to balance "the force of rhetoric against of the weight of material conditions" (142). Marback sees ideology--"a space between subject and object" (143)--as the domain for achieving this balance. We analyze objects (like cities) and speak for them and represent them but we place too much faith in "discursive intervention" (145) and not enough emphasis on material conditions. 'Rhetoric' blinds us to the realities of the 'material.' So we should find "the provocative ground of place making, where actions, attititudes, objects, spaces, values, and words intertwine" (147). He cites Detroit's own Heidelberg art installation as an examle of place-making's potential. The H. project intervenes in civic debates about Detroit and also changes the conversation in affirmative, creative ways. Juxtaposition of art, rhetoric, public debate, and Detroit's realities. "...all is not language" (148). The H. writes the city and intervenes in its materiality.
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