Schedule for English 7601/8601, Section 01

Class Begins

Guest Speaker from IRB: Michelle Eble

**Sometime before class meets on January 31, each member of the class should take the Institutional Review Board Online Education Module. From that page, you'll be directed off-site to the education modules. I think it takes about 3 hours to complete the full set, but you can do them a few at a time in shorter increments.

What is Research in Composition and Rhetoric? Why Do We Do It?

Discuss Syllabus/Schedule

Mini-Lecture: "The Work of Composition and Rhetoric, a Brief History and Review"

Discuss Readings

Readings for This Week

Methods & Methodologies (MM)

• Kirsch & Sullivan, “Introduction”

Under Construction (UC)

• Farris & Anson, “Introduction”
• Ferry, “Theory, Research, Practice, Work”
• Vandenberg, “Composing Composition Studies”
• Zebroski, “Toward a Theory of Theory for CS”

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

Action Research/Teacher Research

Discuss Classroom Observation Practices

Readings for This Week

Power, Taking Note

CP

• Berlin, "The Teacher as Researcher"
• Hillocks, "Teaching, Reflecting, Researching"
• Bissex, "Small Is Beautiful"
• Myers, "Overview of Procedures in Teacher Research"
• Mertler, "Introduction to Action Research"

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

Action Research/Teacher Research

Designing Research Projects

Readings for This Week

MM

• Mortensen, “Analyzing Talk about Writing”
• Ray, “Composition from the Teacher-Research Point of View”
• Beach, “Experimental and Descriptive Research Methods in Composition”

EU

• Williams & Brydon-Miller, "Changing Directions"

CP

• Ladkin, "Enigma of Subjectivity" (pdf)
• Lather, "Research as Praxis" (pdf)

Case Study: Representing Research

Discuss Readings

Readings for this Week

Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods

MM

• Newkirk, “The Narrative Roots of the Case Study”

UC

• Bishop, "Rhetoric of Teacher Talk"

CP

• Fishman, et al., "Performing Writing, Performing Literacy" (pdf)

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

Critical Ethnography

Discuss Readings

Readings for This Week

MM

• Moss, “Ethnography and Composition”

EU

• Brown & Dobrin, "Introduction"
• Brook & Hogg, "Open to Change"
• Hanson, "Critical Auto/Ethnography"
• Alsup, "Protean Subjectivities"

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

Critical Ethnography

Discuss Readings

Readings for This Week

EU

• Reiff, "Mediating Materiality and Discusivity"
• Schroeder, "Ethnographic Experience ..."
• Gorzelsky, "Shifting Figures"
• Massey, "Just What Are We Talking About?
• Lu, "Ethics of Reading Critical Ethnography"

CP

• Cushman, “The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change” (pdf)

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

Historical Research

Field Trip to ECU Archives: Meet in Joyner Special Collections, 4th Floor

Archive Links:

• Photograph Collection
• Finding Aids for Archives

Discuss Archival Research Issues

What does it mean to write history? What histories need to be written? What's a "rhetorical history"? What's the difference between history and historiography?

Readings for This Week

MM

• Connors, “Dreams and Play: Historical Method and Methodology”

CP

• Octolog, “The Politics of Historiography” (hdt)
• North, “The Historians” (hdt)
• Glenn, "Remapping Rhetorical Territory" (pdf)

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

Historical Research

DUE: Class Observations Notes and Reflective Memo

Readings for This Week

EU

• Gaillet, "Writing Program Redesign"

CP

• Brereton, “Introduction” to Origins of Composition Studies in American College (hdt)
• Brereton, et. al., “Archivists with an Attitude” (pdf)
• Crowley, “Let Me Get This Straight” (hdt)
• Gold, "'Where Brains Had a Chance'" (pdf)

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

SPRING BREAK

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) / Rhetorical Analysis / Assessment

Discuss Readings

DUE: Annotated Bibliographies

Readings for This Week

UC

• Huot & Williamson, "What Difference ... Make"

CP

• Huot, O'Neill, & Schendel, "Defining Assessment as Research" (pdf)
• Huot, "Toward a New Theory of Writing Assessment" (pdf)
• Powell, “Critical Discourse Analysis & Composition Studies” (pdf)
• Selzer, "Rhetorical Analysis" (hdt)
• Wysocki, "The Multiple Media of Texts" (hdt)

Research in Electronic Environments (Classrooms & Students)

NO CLASS THIS WEEK

Readings for This Week

Research in Electronic Environments (In & Beyond the Classroom) | Epistemological Issues

Discussion Starters:

• If you had to name the "method(s)" employed by Elias & Brown, Alexander, and McKee, what would you call it/them? Why?
• Elias & Brown think of "E-mail as Rhetorical Space" — what might that mean? What makes a "rhetorical space" and what makes E-mail different from other rhetorical spaces? Are list-servs and E-mail the same thing? What subtle distinctions separate them?
• What "rhetorical spaces" other than E-mail might scholars in Rhet-Comp, TPC, and Discourse study?
• How does Alexander deploy "cultural studies" as a method/methodology? What roles do "narrative" and "case study" play in Alexander's work?
• What problems does Sullivan find with a singlular methodological approach?
• In what ways does Sullivan's "methodological pluralism" evidence of a rhetorical practice/agenda? What makes this method "rhetorical"?
• Sullivan offers two "components" of feminist scholarship (40 - 41) that make it mostly an issue of critical reading. How does that function methodologically? Is "critical reading" a methodology? What are its parameters?
• In what way is feminist research and critique "proactive" according to Sullivan (49)?
• How do Hawisher & Sullivan construct feminist methodologies in online spaces (170)? Epistemologically (RE: Knoblauch), where do these methods lie?
• On the Internet, what are the differences, if any, between an interview and a survey?
• What problems, if any, do you see in Hawisher & Sullivan's research sample/selection of participants?
• "What constitutes feminist action in e-space?" (Hawisher & Sullivan 193)
• How does their research report (essay) vex notions of authorship and research? the role of research "subjects" or "participants"?

Readings for This Week

Online

• Elias & Brown, “Critical Discourse in a Student Listserv” (from Kairos 6.1)
• Alexander, “Ravers on the Web” (from Kairos 7.3)

CP

• Hawisher & Sullivan, “Women on the Networks: Searching for E-Spaces of Their Own” (hdt)
• Knoblauch, “Rhetorical Constructions” (pdf)
• McKee, “Always a Shadow of Hope” (pdf)
• Banks & Eble, "Digital Spaces, Online Environments" (hdt)

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

Troubling Research Paradigms / Epistemologies

Discuss Readings

Readings for This Week

UC

• MacDonald, “Voice of Research”
• Neff, “Grounded Theory”
• Rose and Lauer, “Feminist Methodology”
• Chiang, “Insider/Outsider/Other?”
• Cushman and Monberg, “Re-centering Authority”
• Ray and Barton, “Farther Afield”

Remember to post your Reading Response to your course Blog.

Last Night of Class

Major Project Draft #1 Due for Peer Review

Email Dr. Banks your projects for some preliminary feedback by Wednesday @ 6:30 p.m.

NOTE: You might want to think in terms of "sections" for this draft. Perhaps you're ready to write the justification for the project inquiry, so you write the introduction and theoretical justification -- an exploration what scholarship has been done on this subject; perhaps you know what sort of qualitative or quatitative methods you want to use to gather data and want to write that part for this week. You needed try to start from the beginning, but be sure to tell your readers what's missing so far so that they don't just tell you what you already know is absent in this draft.

No Class - University Reading Day

Final Exam Time

Presentations