Prof. Abby Wilkerson of the University Writing Program invites the GW Community to attend a dialogue between internationally acclaimed activist Nadine Bloch and rhetorician Phyllis Ryder on the language and rhetoric of social protest. View samples of Nadine Bloch's work and learn how to access Prof. Ryder's writings in the full post.
This event is co-sponsored by the English Department, Women's Studies, and the University Writing Program.
When & Where
Wednesday, April 1
7 - 8:30 PM
Gelman 207
Contact: Prof. Abby Wilkerson 
Bloch (wikipedia profile) has led campaigns on issues from nuclear weapons to international trade justice and the environment. She is particularly known for her innovative use of street theater, puppetry, and performance art (and has been known to sport a hand-painted t-shirt proclaiming "Puppetry Is Not A Crime").
Ryder's (profile) scholarship on protest rhetoric explores the use of nontraditional means of communication such as puppetry as a form of democratic participation in international political/policy deliberation.
Together, Bloch and Ryder will explore rhetorical challenges and strategies in the ongoing efforts to foster participation in democratic processes globally.
Prof. Ryder's article,"In(ter)ventions of Global Democracy: An Analysis of the Rhetorics of the A-16 World Bank/IMF Protests in Washington, DC" Rhetoric Review v. 25, iss. 4 (2006): 408-26 is available to members of the GW community by searching "Ryder Phyllis" on the Articles tab of the Gelman Library website.
View pictures of Nadine Bloch's activist work with puppets here and here.
Nadine Bloch's "Global Warming Polar Bears"
Thursday, March 26, 2009
DC Activist Nadine Bloch and UW20 Prof. Phyllis Ryder Discuss the Rhetorics of Social Protest
Friday, March 13, 2009
How to Get Started on Research as an Emergent Researcher
Most high schools and many college writing courses teach "Research" as a set of skills to be mastered, which can be applied to any "research problem." In the First Year Writing Program, we believe that research is a methodical, but organic and essentially thought-driven process. Simply put "research" are the situational but rigorous strategies that intellectuals use to observe the world (be it in the form of text, human behavior, social structures, or natural phenomenon) and to develop defensible and productive knowledge-claims about it. The faculty believe that first-year students are not only ready to conduct real research on authentic problems, we believe that their findings, analyses, and interpretations are worth reading. The toughest problem for emergent researchers working to develop methodical but organic strategies for observing the world in particular research situations is knowing how to manage multiple new concepts, processes, and techniques at the same time as they are becoming experts in the subject and field of their project.
In this post, Professors Phyllis Ryder & Eric Drown, and librarians Dolsy Smith & Deborah Gaspar offer advice on how to get started on research as an emergent researcher. Please, whether you're an emergent or experienced researcher, leave a comment or question derived from your own research experiences.
According to Prof. Drown, "emergent researchers have to embrace a substantive mind shift as they make the move from doing research assignments to rehearse research skills to conducting authentic research on open questions of active interest. In a 'research skills' approach, students are taught to answer questions definitively by seeking, evaluating, and presenting information. The work of the researcher is to collate, judge, and perhaps to recommend. In contrast, researchers working on authentic research problems have to construct objects of study, figure out the appropriate and meaningful questions to ask, locate scholarly communities of interest, determine or invent supple and reliable methods of observation and analysis, and test their knowledge-claims for accuracy, sufficiency, and productivity in particular discourse communities. In this model, the researcher observes, explores, creates, interprets, forges connections, persuades, serves and participates in communities of interest."
This all sounds very complicated, but librarian Dolsy Smith's"very unlibrarian-like" approach to his research-work captures the spirit of an organically developing matrix of essentially curiosity-driven tasks that makes up a useful research process:
"Research never really begins (just as it never really ends). You 'start' your research by sorting through what you already know or think or wonder about a subject, from the assumptions and impressions you bring to it, from whatever in your experience has drawn you to this subject in the first place. But this is hardly a limitation. In fact, if you neglect this part of the process, you'll have a hard time identifying your own stake in the subject matter, by which I mean that once you start juggling what others have already said about it, you won't know what you yourself have to say.
I start my research in a very exploratory mood: I spend a lot of time poking around, indulging in free association, following various angles and leads, looking for the hook that will catch my interest. Often I hop from footnote to footnote until I hit on a text that allows me to think about the subject from an unexpected perspective or with a vocabulary that I'm not used to. This kind of text need not relate directly to the subject I'm researching; indeed, it can work better if it doesn't. That's because the point of research and argument is to introduce fresh points of view on [even] familiar subjects, and the most important arguments are those that draw connections between things that no one had considered relevant to each other before. "Relevance" is not given; for any particular subject, there is not a finite set of relevant sources waiting to be discovered. The task of the researcher is to construct the relevance of what she finds. Something I read makes me think of something else--I test out a connection--if it doesn't click, I have to be prepared to go back and look (and think) again. But the key components of research are reading and writing and thinking."
Follow Mr. Smith's advice and you'll end up developing the "sense of interest in and curiosity towards your subject" that librarian Deborah Gaspar says is a key trait of successful researchers. According to Ms Gaspar, you can create that sense of curiosity by using research skills that you already have. In early stages of the project, she advises, researchers should "do a kind of mental inventory--ask yourself what you already know about your subject. Make a list of words and look for links between different ideas. This will set you up to think about what you want to know or are curious about a subject. There's nothing wrong with Googling your topic to help you in this idea-generating phase. Just use the results list (and search suggestions) to see how the search and summary algorithms connect words, ideas, examples, events, and people to one another and to see what your brain-based algorithms (intuition, insight) make of the material you've fished up."
Prof. Ryder's suggestions aim at helping emerging researchers understand what they're looking for and how to work with what they find. She says:
"Don't research just to find 'fact'; research to find arguments. While you might find some 'facts' useful for setting up the background of your essay, the real heart of your work will be to figure out the many ways people argue about the issue. It's rare to find two people who define the problem exactly the same way; fewer still define it the same way and recommend similar courses of action. More likely, you'll find that people disagree about what's going on, about whether what's going on is productive or harmful, about whether a solution fits the problem and so on. Look for the arguments and figure out how you can group them. Who is talking to whom about what part of the problem? Which part of this discussion will be most useful for you?
As you find some articles that really seem to speak to the question you've found, pause to read them. Write a "coming to terms" (a la Joe Harris in Rewriting) identifying the overall purpose of the piece, how it develops, and what its uses and limits are. This kind of close reading and writing as you go will help you keep track of the conversation you're following. You can start seeing patterns; you'll start noticing when a lot of people agree on the same point and when there is disagreement.
On a real practical level: Sign up for a session on how to use Refworks (the free citation manager GW libraries make available) and then use it to capture all the articles and books you think you might use. keeps track of what you found and where you found it, and will later format your bibliography for you. Using it from the start will save you time down the road."
Whether your research is in the humanities, social sciences, or sciences; whether you're seeking narrow answers to specific questions, opening broad new lines of inquiry, looking at familiar things in a new way, or clearing away previous wrong answers, research is a creative act of knowledge-making situated in the needs, habits, and interests of communities of interest. Just as what counts as "good writing" varies in different disciplinary, professional, cultural, or civic settings, so too does what counts as "good research." As you get more familiar with the research practices of the communities of interest you seek to join, you'll feel more comfortable with the ways members of those communities construct their objects of study, organize matrices of data, create frameworks of meaning, and make knowledge-claims. But, as Ms Gaspar advises, "if you think of yourselves as engaged in a conversation with other writers interested in similar concerns, and observe the ways they do things, you'll quickly learn how to contribute to, extend, and even change the scholarly conversation."
Please, whether you're an emergent or experienced researcher, leave a comment or question derived from your own research experiences!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
How to Revise (NOT JUST EDIT!) Your Writing and Get Better Results
1. It’s crucial to make a mental adjustment and see revision as a normal part of the writing process of even the best writers. Prof. Zink tells her students to “let go of the deeply held notion that if you were a better, smarter, more adept, savvier, more intellectual writer you wouldn't have to revise so much. Just Let. It. Go. The most brilliant writers in the world are the ones who don't doubt for a moment that any piece worth anything is going to take rewriting. In fact, the better, smarter, more adept, savvier, more intellectual a writer you are, the more likely you are to build in time both for drafting and the craft of revision.” 2. You need to make a distinction between editing and revision. Both Prof. Riedner and Prof. Troutman draw from the work of Joseph Harris (Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts) to making clear the difference between editing and revision. According to Prof. Riedner, “When you edit, you work at the surface level of a paper. You fix errors, tinker with sentences, and fine tune a document. Editingcan improve the design and ‘flow’ of a document. Revision, on the other hand, revisits writing in order to rethink its aims, how it works with material it interprets, how it develops ideas, etc.... Revision“rethink[s] the ideas and examples that drive your thinking in an essay.” Prof. Troutman points out that “In revising, you are changing your mind, shifting your claim, anticipating new counter-claims, bringing in new evidence, re-ordering your major points; you are engaging your text, perhaps even struggling with it, wrestling it into a new shape. In editing, you are fixing your text, both in terms of correcting errors (syntax, citation format, etc.) and in terms of giving it final form (font choice, wordsmithing for style, etc.); you are now treating it like an object, a beautiful thing you can now show. 3. You need a functioning process for making revision systematic. This will probably vary according to your needs, but here are some suggestions. All of our experts suggest starting by analyzing your draft. Prof. Zink advises beginning revision by “Figuring out where you are most stuck. Once you've identified this idea, section, passage, or even sentence, find someone who will listen to you--peer from the class, roommate, paramour, random-person-muttering-to-self-in-local-park, or professor--sit that person down in front of you, and talk about what the trouble is. Let that partner know all he or she has to do is listen. Explain what's not working and why you're confused and why all of this is giving you a terrific headache. Let the person nod obligingly as you stammer through your confusion. Chances are, in just a few minutes of talking about the issue out loud, you'll come to some degree of clarity and even a solution.” Prof. Ryder offers a three-step process: A. “Go through your draft and ‘chunk’ it--identify the main sections of the paper. Look at each big chunk and treat it like a mini-essay: Does it have a cohesive purpose? Will readers know what it's doing in the essay? How might you clarify the purpose and argument as you move into that section? After analyzing your chunks (sounds gross I know!), B. “Go through the draft and write answers to the following questions in the margins for each paragraph: What is my main point? What is the purpose of this paragraph (is it making an argument, providing an illustration for something already said, introducing a new section of the paper, describing my method?). C. Then look at the overall structure. Are things in the right order? Could sections be combined? Is there a logical progression? Finally, be critical about "flow." Anything can flow into anything else, but that doesn't mean it should. Can you describe the logic of why each part goes where it goes? Like Prof. Zink, Prof. Troutman urges you to get someone to help you analyze your draft, but has your interlocutor play a more active role. “Peer responses are key, since you can't always see what other readers will. But you must train your readers; otherwise they will probably focus only on grammar and spelling, and that's editing, not revision.” Ask your peer to read the draft with any of the following purposes—borrowed from Peter Elbow’s & Pat Belanoff’s Sharing & Responding—in mind (only one at time, though). After they've read your draft, ask them to: A. Write a descriptive outline of the paper, two sentences for each paragraph in the paper: One sentence summarizing precisely what the paragraph says. One sentence describing what the paragraph does and why--what its role is at that moment in the paper (e.g., establishing other scholarly views, laying out the paper's agenda, presenting evidence, discussing a counter-claim, connecting two major sub-claims, speculating about possible implications of the claim, etc.). This lets you find out how your reader perceives not only all the things you are saying, but also why you are saying those things in the order you do. Does your reader see alternate ways to organize it? Do you, based on how he or she outlined it? B. Restate your central claim, but only in the form of questions: E.g., Okay, so are you trying to argue that ... ? or is it more about the question of ... ? This gives you the chance to reflect on your claims--and the question of whether your reader saw them as you intended--rather than simply to defend them. Your peer might even see a more interesting claim you could be making. C. Believe everything about the draft: its central claim, its evidence, its use of scholars' work, its organization, its style, its word choices, its title, etc. Respond with ideas to further what is already going on with these things. D. Doubt everything about the draft: its central claim, its evidence, its use of scholars' work, its organization, its style, its word choices, its title, etc. Respond with ideas for addressing the objections that arise out of this doubt. Change your mindset about revision and try out some of these techniques. You’re writing will be richer, smarter, more disciplined, and more interesting. You’ll have learned more and so will have your readers! Let us know what you think!
Every section of UW20 requires students to substantively revise between 25 and 30 pages of writing each semester. We place so much emphasis on revision because of our own experiences with using writing to begin to grasp dimly perceived ideas and to wrestle them into shape. Revision, the process of assessing, developing, and exploring ideas produced in generative drafts, is a crucial step in producing pieces of writing worth reading.
In this article First-Year Writing Professors Christy Zink, Rachel Riedner, Philip Troutman, and Phyllis Ryder teach you what you need to know to revise (NOT JUST EDIT!) like a pro!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
UW20 Students Work in DC Communities, Learn How to Make Writing Do Work
Students in Prof. Phyllis Mentzell Ryder's UW20 course forge connections among writing, public needs, and knowledge-making through community work. If you've taken (or are taking) Prof. Ryder's course or are a member of one of the community organizations in which Prof. Ryder's students have worked, we'd love to hear about your experiences. Leave a comment!
Prof. Ryder writes:For the past few years, I've connected my sections of UW20 to Washington, DC nonprofit organizations and I require my students to spend at least twenty hours during the semester working off-campus in these DC communities. Students in my sections have to take some extra initiative—they have to get out of Foggy Bottom, meet people they probably wouldn't have talked to if they'd passed on the street, and start noticing local community cultures and languages. All of this might seem antithetical to what a "writing class" should be. But for me, teaching a writing class that includes service to DC organizations creates rich opportunities for students to go beyond understanding the connections among writing, publics, and knowledge-making to forging those connections for themselves. Following are some of the key features and benefits of this approach to UW20.
In my experience, students have a much richer understanding of both public and academic writing by the end of the course. This emphasis on public writing makes sense to me, since only some freshmen go on to be professors, but all will be citizens.
Learning how to enter a professional community by studying it's habitual uses of language is not so different from what we do as students. As we choose majors and start figuring out how to talk and write like a biochemist or a psychologist or an art historian—we're always trying to understand the discourse of the community we're entering. In my writing sections, this process of "reading" the discourse so that we can speak it more fluently is a central aspect of the course. Its easier to do with community organizations than academic disciplines because community organizations are usually much more upfront about their missions and goals.
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