Introduction to Yancey

Welcome to my blog post! I hope you all are surviving the last week of the school year.

I'll get right to it: below is a quote mash-up introduction of Kathleen Blake Yancey.

“Her research and consulting work focuses on composition studies generally; on writing assessment, especially print and electronic portfolios; and on the intersections of culture, literacy and technologies.” 

“In addition to co-founding the journal Assessing Writing and co-editing it for seven years, she has authored, edited, or co-edited eleven scholarly books and two textbooks as well as over 70 articles and book chapters. Her latest volume is the co-edited Electronic Portfolios 2.0, which highlights the research on electronic portfolios conducted under the auspices of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research. Her edited collection Delivering College Composition: The Fifth Canon, was released recently as well; it received the Best Book Award from the Council of Writing Program Administrators. She is also the Editor of College Composition and Communication (CCC), the flagship journal in composition and rhetoric.” 

Chair, President of NCTE

President of WPA

Chair CCCC

 

The title of this video is called "Remixing our Scholarship"; Yancey here discusses the need to make scholarship more assessable for local and political reasons. She also stresses the exigency (like at the beginning of her C’s address) for scholarship and writing, rather than just what we are personally interested in. It’s worth sharing just so you can get a feel of her persona—it changes how I read her C’s address. 

“Re-designing Graduate Education in Composition and Rhetoric: The Use of Remix as Concept, Material, and Method” was written in 2009. This article appeared in the “The Future of Graduate Education in Computers and Writing” issue of Computers and Composition. Other articles were similar, in which the authors offered advice in preparing students to be professionals based on experiences at their own programs. It describes the process of redesigning the rhetoric and composition program at Florida State University in 2005. You can check out the program’s website here.

Yancey describes this process as a remix, “making a new, coherent program both from fragments of the old program and from new programmatic pieces” (5). Remixing is defined as “the combining of ideas, narratives, sources” which Yancey says is still “a classical means of invention” (5).

Yancey later describes the new program, focusing on a few specific classes. Overall, as she mentions, there is an “embeddeness of technology” in all of the course offerings (7).

Check out the Digital Studio’s Twitter feed here.

One of the main goals for the program was to examine how literacies and technologies interact. Yancey says the design of the program led her to two areas to consider further:

1.     “the role of what William Gass has called the ‘making[ness]’ of a text and its relationship to technology”

2.     regards to “the everyday-ness of texts and their connection to self-sponsorship and sustainability” (9).

I think these are important aspects to consider when implementing technology into any classroom, and questions I hope you keep in mind as you read the articles for Tuesday.

For class discussion or blog response:

1. How do you see remix as a different process than editing, combining, borrowing, or revision?

2. How can we use remix in our classrooms? In our discipline? In the university?

3. How does the concept of remix problematize the composition process? How should it approached when composing and assigning multimodal compositions?

4. In the article abstract, Yancey writes that the program at FSU was designed as a way to meet the needs to a 21^st century student. What do you see as these needs? How should/do these needs change the way we teach FYC? At what point does responsibility for these needs go beyond the classroom? At what point—if any—should students become their own [technological] literary sponsors? And finally, how does Yancey approach this idea in her C’s address?

5. Yancey writes that there were three key factors to designing the program: relevant social needs, disciplinary trends, and financial resources. What are the potential problems of each of these factors, both in regards to A) designing or developing a program and B) the curriculum of the program (and that of FYC classes)?

6. In what ways do you see Yancey’s call to action in her C’s address succeeding or failing in her description of the new program at FSU?

7. Here are some of the words and phrases Yancey uses to describe the program and reactions to different aspects of the program:

“important role” (7)

“noteworthy” (7)

“complemented our other offerings” (8)

“extracurricular activities with a curricular benefit” (8)

“intriguing and challenging” (9)

“Faculty were unanimous in their appreciation” (9)

“the library’s interest in working with us” (9)

“contributed to our program in exciting ways” (10)

“distinctive” (10)

“a program that is at once at the center of the discipline” (10)

“both a signature course and a distinctive programmatic approach” (11)

“a member of a more recent generation” (12)

Why do you think Yancey chose to write the article in such a praise-worthy way? I ask, hoping you’ll take into consideration the lack of failures mentioned in the article.

8. Fraiberg quotes Heidi McKee who argues the “cultural revolution is a social and cultural one” (112). How do you see (or not see) this concept in the FSU program? Does it seem like the program addresses cultural ecologies?