Two Feet In | Writing and the Institution

What Is the Relationship between Critical Literacy and Citizenship? Part I of this mini-series As I continue to draft the syllabus and calendar of my "Literature of Resistance" course for 2015 Spring, I ask myself what I want from the students -- not in the form of assessment material, not as quizzes and papers -- but what they will teach me about their own literacy in 2014 2015 from their life experiences. My students are among the people I respect most in this world -- honest, frank, true, loyal, friendly, scared, vulnerable, brave, and full of humor. These are people -- humans, adults -- I want to surround myself with in my life. Their experiences with literacy and citizenship are different than mine, and so they have much to teach me. I hope to present the entire course, then, as a form of critical literacy where we all learn from each other. It's my place to facilitate discussion and to teach writing strategies, but I expect to learn from their discussions and l...

Globalization/ Neo-liberalism as Opportunity for Public Sphere-Making? In Ackerman and Coogan's work on public rhetoric, the editors argue that the  public turn of writing since 1970 originates with or at least was focused at the Wingspread Confernce which addressed rhetoric’s epistemic crisis. “... the departure point was that neo-Aristotelian methods valorized persuasion and made exemplary the political speech within historical context of the state” and to see the message as larger than just persuasion, but also the rhetorical functions of ego-defence, knowledge-making, values expression (4).  Herbert F. Johnson, Jr., Wingspread, residence in Racine, Wisconsin. House reflected in pool. Library of Congress Prints and Photograph gsc 5a03863 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/gsc.5a03863  Communication/Speech was stifled in this tradition, but compositionists had moved beyond structure and form, current-traditional approaches. Then we see enter into the discipline the cogn...

I presume that we would not want to be overcome by barbarians -- from without, or from within. I learned the etymology of "barbarian" when I was just a boy, when I was interested in the meaning of my family's names, when I searched the origin of my aunt Barbara's name. barbarian (adj.)   mid-14c., from Medieval Latin  barbarinus  (source of Old French  barbarin  "Berber, pagan, Saracen, barbarian"), from Latin  barbaria  "foreign country," from Greek  barbaros "foreign, strange, ignorant," from PIE root  *barbar-  echoic of unintelligible speech of foreigners (compare Sanskrit  barbara-  "stammering," also "non-Aryan," Latin  balbus "stammering," Czech  blblati  "to stammer"). Greek  barbaroi  (n.) meant "all that are not Greek," but especially the Medes and Persians. Originally not entirely pejorative, its sense darkened after the Persian wars. The Romans (technically themselves...

Flashback. Just saw the following quote via Twitter from bell hooks, and it made me think of the 2013 Texas conference of the Campaign to end the Death Penalty on 2 November. I had never met with CEDP before or attended similar meetings. I'm strongly opposed to capital punishment for multiple reasons, which will be the topic of some future posting. Here, however, I post my notes with some updated links. Some names I've redacted simply to maintain privacy. Though the number of executions in Texas has been decreasing, the state still leads the country (518 since 1976, 10 in 2014) ... and poverty of unwed mothers, uninsured, etc. etc.  And not surprisingly, because of the states' and nation's racist "justice" system, the discrepancy between the general population and men and women executed is obvious: These and other statistics updated to December 2014 can be found at the Death Penalty Information Center . Campaign to End the Death Penalty ...

23 December 2014. A cold front came through Houston this morning, dropping the temperatures to what Houstonians consider "chilly." I'm balancing my free time with writing, reading, napping, exercising, cleaning and recycling, and anything other than what might be considered "work." Going through my files, I found this reflection from my day-long volunteer work in a warmer July 2012 with Zach Moser and Eric Leshinsky of the Shrimp Boat Project , doing more harm than good with their efforts to harvest shrimp in Galveston Bay. They asked me to write a reflection, included here. What I didn't mention is that I lost a very important piece of wood that day, used to separate live shrimp from the other haul. Imagine someone working so fast that in his haste to throw some crab away, he throws the separating board instead. Yeah, I didn't mention that. My purpose that warm July was twofold: to get some experience working manual labor and to understand more abou...

Rambling, Part I I'm rereading Long's  Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Local Publics  and thinking about how the institution of the community college fails in its approach to literacy because of its allegiance to the state system and not to the community which it claims to serve. They make two claims, both which meet the cultural expectation that "education leads to success": Community colleges are inexpensive institutions that provide accredited courses which transfer to four year institutions; the assumption there that it's the four-year degree -- not the two-year degree or certification -- that fulfills the promise that a college education leads to success "Careers, not jobs." Here, the claim is that, instead of starting entry-level in retail or the service industry, with few skills to meet the demands of globalist corporate practices that hire and fire at will, the community college student will gain skills that prepare for long-term ...

Everyman 9-10 Dec 2014 @WANPoetry, AvantGarden, Houston TX Epigraph: From 15th Century English play Everyman “Now we go together, lovingly, To Confession , that cleansing river” I … am not black, But my brother is. When someone looks at us, askance, They don’t see what I see, They may feel something I have unlearned -- through the miles we have walked together -- Unlearned that his hair and my hair mean nothing. For his heart is my heart, And our journey to the river is long. I … am not brown, But my brother is. When someone listens to us, They often hear the language of conquest. But I hear the words of the heart, Garnished with the accent Of ancient empires still vibrant in The lives and limbs of their sons. My brother’s “ si, se puede” is my language, That voice of courage, of demeaning, life-risking, World-changing journeys to al otro lado . For his heart is my heart, and we walk To Atzlan -- or Houston -- ...

Why Literature of Resistance? Or, Who's Afraid of Pol Pot? Next spring, I'll be teaching a course I'm calling "Literature of Resistance" I'll be collaborating in a literature criticism course where we'll examine fiction and non-fiction examples of resistance -- critiquing the social/cultural kairos in which the work was framed, the author's intentions (if available), the literary/rhetorical moves made, the audience's reception, and any short-term or long-term effects of the literature. Currently, the authors' list includes Acosta, Frankl, Harriet Jacobs, Henry Thoreau, James Baldwin, Frederick Douglas, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jefferson, King, Atwood, Mandela, Chavez, Chief Joseph, and Malcolm X. Those are on the tentative syllabus, though I intend to introduce each of these in the first week and have students choose which authors they are most interested in, then prioritize our syllabus based on those conversations. Further, I'll ...