The three main ideas which shape the work of Kathleen Yancey are technology, portfolios, and assessment. While I am not as familiar with her work with the latter two, I have found abundant evidence of that shows how her work with technology has helped to shape current methods in composition and rhetoric. Rhonda’s use of the interview with Yancey added great insight into one of the important theorists we are studying this semester. In addition, Yancey, like Selfe with memory, is interested in the five rhetorical canons and how they can be applied to our evolving definition of texts and literacy.
Rhonda mentioned two works that Yancey stated as those of which she is most proud. One of these is the article “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key” which I read as a part of my annotated bibliography, so I thought I would share a bit. This piece is based on the CCCC chair address in 2004 and addresses the current “tectonic” changes in literacy. Yancey does so by comparing the writing public of today to the reading public that developed in nineteenth century England in that they are both socially constructed, politically and economically driven, and that both take place outside of the traditional education system. The growing number of genres that students are using means that students can no longer be considered educated by mastering reading and writing alone (305). Communication and education have turned digital, but most assessment methods are lagging drastically behind. This is interesting in light of CSAPs, which many of us have just finished. We are still asking students to respond chirographically (not even through print) though the vast majority are far more adept with the digital word. Yancey backs a new curriculum emphasizing the textual relationships and context of composition. Finally, Yancey identifies three keys to composition that address a writing public: the circulation of composition (the view that all “writing” is done as a part of a conversation), the canons of rhetoric, and deicity of technology. Deicity deals with the time and space in which texts are created.
Yancey brings up a lot of interesting new ideas regarding the incorporation of technology and challenges her audience to embrace the idea of composition in a new key. I personally found this article to be both challenging and inspiring. The author speaks with such passion that it is hard not to get excited about trying new methods to challenge students to think critically about the world around them. In particular, I am interested in her discussion of the cannons of rhetoric, which she believes are all interrelated though she focuses mainly on the two most neglected ones, memory and delivery.
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ReplyDeleteEric, your passion in writing about Yancey's passion sent me right to "Made not only in words." Her work fairly crackles with the electricity of the medium she encourages us to embrace fully. I enjoy the visual design of the article and realize how much it contributes to the pull of the piece. How can we not ask or allow as much in our student work?
ReplyDeleteI read this essay while I was working at the writing center. There were two comp students working on argumentative essays and intermittently asking me questions. I couldn’t help comparing my experience many years ago, poring over card catalogs and reader’s guide to periodicals for information, whereas these girls were on laptops, flipping back and forth with two or three tabs searching google and the library site for statistics they needed. And, yet, the assignment hadn’t changed in all those years. Yes, teachers have accepted and encourage internet research, but is that enough? What about creating assignments that truly engage with the technology available, using it as more than just a tool for research or word processing? Yancey gives us exciting possibilities.