How
do I even begin to try and pull together everything I have learned this
quarter? I started this quarter as a composition theory noob, and I have come a
long way in learning about the theories and bases that make up my field!
Obviously, I still have a lot of work to do in understanding certain theories
(ecology, complexity, disability, and queer theory, to name a few). I also have
some great reading recommendations from others in the class (not that I’ll have
time to read them anytime soon, but we can hope!).
First, I was so glad to dip into
learning about Appalachia and its role in composition studies—it was a total
epiphany moment, but also hard to put away my own biases. I’d love to take a
class devoted to Appalachia and its scholars someday, since I could contribute
to the community. If I hadn’t already decided on a direction for my Master’s
essay, Appalachia had potential!
Speaking of my research interests,
this class also helped narrow/define them. I think it would be awesome to keep
working on my final project even after the class is done. I could be a “Twitter
scholar”! More broadly, I’d like to continue researching Remix,
Post-Everything, and how those theories contribute to my interests in pop
culture, digital literacy, multimedia, and hypertext. I was surprised to learn
about the journals KAIROS and Computers and Composition, since they
are also very relevant. Someday I hope that my meta-knowledge of pop culture,
music, movies, and television will come in handy. If I’m not mistaken, this is
called Convergence Culture? For now, I’ll stick with researching social
networking and the classroom. Only now, I have theory to back it up!
Other directions that I could expand on are the relation to music and composition (it clicked during our last discussion that “composition” is writing AND music, a “no duh” moment), teacher technology training, and the differences in preparedness from undergrads, to grad students, to instructors—that makes sense in my head, but it does not translate well to words.
In my undergraduate coursework, I
took an “Introduction to Composition” course that, while valuable, only
emphasized works up to the 80s. Reading research and theory that was published
more currently made theory more relevant to me, which is wonderful because I
struggle to comprehend some of this stuff (sorry for the non-academic term “stuff”).
During our class discussions, I yearned to apply *everything* to pedagogy,
which I understand wasn’t the entire aim of our class. I made a lot of notes
about how to apply various aspects of our discussions to pedagogy—trust me, you
don’t want to sift through those! I ended up having an internal dialogue with
myself during class that focused on pedagogy, which is probably why I looked “spaced
out” sometimes (to quote Office Space).
A good way to sum up this course is to connect it to a movie like Inception; if I were to take this course
again and again, I would probably learn something new every time.
*edit* I totally just edited this post three times to fix subject/verb agreement. This is how you know it's finals week.
*edit* I totally just edited this post three times to fix subject/verb agreement. This is how you know it's finals week.
I agree that it's challenging to synthesize this course. For me personally, my entire first year at OU has been trying to work through how my degree (in rhetoric and applied writing) fits or melds with composition, particularly pedagogy. In some ways I think that I feel as if the field is constricting, as if all our scholarship has to come back to the classroom, whereas when I was getting my BA I felt as if I was free to work more heavily in other disciplines: media theory, philosophy, literary criticism. I had read almost nothing in the field of composition studies prior to this year, and, in many ways I'm still questioning whether or not I want to be doing scholarship so closely tied to the composition classroom.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you feel similarly, considering your BA was in, I think you've said (I could be wrong), technical communication.
Tech writing, but yes, I agree that media scholarship appeals to me, but I feel I can connect it to some theory we read toward the end of this quarter. Honestly, I have no idea where I'm going next! As one of my undergrad professors told me, some "wandering lost in the woods" is good for finding yourself.
ReplyDelete