Teaching in the 21st Century: Adapting Writing Pedagogies to the College Curriculum (Garland Reference Library of Social Science)

385 Pages·1999·1.02 MB·English

by  Alice Robertson

T 21ST
EACHING IN THE
C
ENTURY
CULTURAL STUDIES IN THE CLASSROOM
VOLUME 1
GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
VOLUME 1189

TEACHING IN THE
21ST CENTURY
ADAPTING WRITING
PEDAGOGIES TO THE
COLLEGE CURRICULUM
edited by
ALICE ROBERTSON
and
BARBARA SMITH
FALMER PRESS
Published in 1999 by
Falmer Press
A Member of the Taylor & Francis Group
19 Union Square West
New York, NY 10003

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Copyright © 1999 by Alice Robertson and Barbara Smith
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and record-
ing, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written
permission from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Teaching in the 21st century: adapting writing pedagogies to the
curriculum/edited by Alice Robertson and Barbara Smith.
p. cm.—(Cultural studies in the classroom; vol. 1)
(Garland reference library of social science; SS 1189)
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-3152-5 (alk. paper)
1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching.
2. Interdisciplinary approach in education. 3. Curriculum change.
I. Robertson, Alice. II. Smith, Barbara. III. Title: Teaching in
the twenty-first century. IV. Series. V. Series: Garland reference
library of social science; v. 1189.
PE1404.T394 1999
808'.042’07–dc21 99–32108
CIP
ISBN 0-203-90502-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-90595-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword Amitava Kumar vii
Preface Pat Belanoff ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction Alice Robertson and Barbara Smith xv
1 Teaching from Within: Meshing Interdisciplinary
Learning and Writing Pedagogy in a University
Seminar Program 1
2 It Came from Aristotle: Teaching Film with Rhetoric 15
3 Why Lecture? Using Alternatives
to Teach College Mathematics 29
4 Experiences with Writing Assignments
in Upper-Division Computer Science Courses 49
5 Informing Our Values and Sexual Behavior
through the Use of Writing Communities 67
6 Students Writing the Ghetto into Short Fiction:
An Experiment in Teaching (Literary) Analysis 81
7 Teaching Literature As/Is a Process 97
8 Role-playing in the Interdisciplinary Classroom 123
9 Performing Politics: Poetry in a Writing Classroom 135
10 A Pedagogy of Community and Collaboration:
A Beginning 153
v
vi Contents
11 Authority, Collaboration, and Ownership:
Sources for Critical Writing and Portfolio Assessment 181
12 Interpretive Communities: Making Use of Readings
and Misreadings in the Literature Classroom
and Elsewhere 201
13 Read, Write, and Learn: Improving Literacy
Instruction Across the Disciplines 213
14 Emerging Meaning: Reading as a Process 227
15 Critical Theory: A Jump Start and Road Map
for Student Writers 239
16 Teaching, Writing, Changes: Disciplines, Genres,
and the Errors of Professional Belief 257
17 The Tie That Binds: Toward an Understanding
of Ideology in the Composition and
Literature Classrooms (and Beyond) 279
18 Blurring Boundaries: Rhetoric in Literature
and Other Classrooms 297
19 The ComPosition-ing of Culture and Anarchy:
Recovering a Cultural Conflict in Arnold’s Serene Text 313
20 Case Studies in the Writing Classroom:
Theory and Practice 337
Author Biographies 359
Series Editor’s Foreword
Princess Di has recently found her place on the shelf of cultural studies
texts. And whether that place is well-deserved or not, a recent volume on
Princess Di reminds me of the earlier days when folks outside the fold of
cultural studies spoke dismissively of it as “Madonna Studies.”
Unlike those critics, I have felt that a part of the job of cultural studies
teachers was to make available to their students critical readings of the
world outside the classroom. Sometimes, as during the Persian Gulf War,
I had felt an absence of teaching materials. At other times, like the Anita
Hill hearings, the Rodney King riots, the O.J. trial, or even the silliness of
the Bill-Monica affair, I have profited from the smart readings provided
by my colleagues in the field.
However, in attending to the events outside the walls of the academy,
cultural studies practitioners have often forgotten about the crucial site
where these oppositional knowledges are mobilized: the classroom. This
series with Garland—“Cultural Studies in the Classroom”—is a response
to that particular lack.
Books in this series aim to focus on the deployment of cultural studies
knowledges in the pedagogical space where teachers spend such a large
part of their time. By paying particular attention to the classroom, we
bring cultural studies back to our students.
This also functions as a reality check. What—and how—are our stu-
dents learning? Paradoxically, it is only by returning to these questions in
the academy that we escape the danger of having remained merely aca-
demic. If we do this work well, cultural studies as an intellectual project
in the future might have a shelf life that is longer than dead princesses’.
Amitava Kumar
University of Florida
vii

Preface
Pedagogical strategies stimulated by the resurgence and redirection of
writing instruction since the late 1950s have matured and broadened as a
result of both thoughtful reflection on actual class practice and increas-
ingly complex theoretical connections. The articles in this collection pro-
vide evidence of the value of these strategies in classes in all disciplines.
Inevitably (and appropriately) these strategies have been altered to suit
their new contexts, but their roots remain firmly embedded in innovative
practices developed first for the writing classroom.
Writing instruction occupies a unique place in education. Its ances-
tors—Greek, Roman, and medieval rhetoric—were far more theoretical
than practical in their approaches to their subject. But beginning with
lists and discussions of figures and tropes and with treatises on letter
writing in the late Middle Ages, rhetoric began a move toward the prag-
matic which steadily, although not consistently, focused on prescriptive
instruction. In the early years in this country, such instruction acquired
the label of “current-traditional.” In the “current-traditional” classroom,
students analyzed texts structured more or less according to certain pat-
terns and then were given assignments to create their own texts built on
these same patterns. Form and formula, for the most part, took prec-
edence over content and subject matter.
However, when rhetoric in a more classical sense reentered the pic-
ture, it came with a heavy emphasis on invention—an aspect of rhetoric
which teachers and scholars realized was being shortchanged. This em-
phasis on invention, in turn, led practitioners to begin to ponder the mys-
ix