Spring Book Order

As we put another semester in the books, its time to place the book orders for the Spring. Here's what I have on order:

Rhetoric and Gaming

• Bogost, Persuasive Games
• McGonigal, Reality is Broken
• Fille and Platten, The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design

Visual Rhetoric

• Golombisky, White Space is Not Your Enemy
• Stockman, How to Shoot Web Video that Doesn't Suck
• Williams & Tollett, The Non-Designer's Photoshop Book
• Adobe InDesign CS5 Classroom in a Book

The Rhetoric and Gaming class is under-development; it will hopefully be a permanent addition to our major. I haven't taught VisRhet in a few years; this time around I built my syllabus around Meredith's version of the course (adding a derive project for some good ole self-indulgent navel-gazing).

Yes I appreciate the irony of not developing a CSS sheet for the VisRhet webpage. It will come, it will come. And, yes, I realize that Pac-Man is disappearing on a few browsers. That one actually bothers me more...

Course Evaluations

Today is the last day of class at USF, so I passed around a course evaluation of my own design. This semester my class has focused on "digital citizenship": students maintained a blog all semester long dedicated to a topic/hobby of their choice. They then wrote a 8-10 page research paper responding to one argument from Andrew Keen's polemic Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture. All in all, I'd say it was a good course--I'll let you know what they think once I get all the info.

Here's the questions I asked them to respond to:

Exit Questions for Expository Writing: Digital Citizenship

1. Did you find They Say, I Say a useful text? Did you think I did enough to present the text in class? I plan on using this text again, so please let me know what more I could do with it.
2. I am definitely replacing the Lanham Style book. It didn't accomplish what I thought it could, and I apologize for making you purchase it. That said—should I replace it with a book on writing (specifically, a book that gives organizational strategies) or another book on “digital culture” that argues against Keen/series of articles responding to Keen (such as the Shirky, Weinberger, etc.). I am leading toward the first book.
3. Did I manage to present three ideas this semester that helped you with your writing? What were those ideas?
4. Was there a particular lecture/presentation on writing that you found useful? Remind me about it.
5. What would you have liked me to address that I didn’t? What did you expect from the course on the first day that we didn’t do? What else would you have liked me to do? What do writing classes need to do?
6. This semester I asked you to read almost all of Andrew Keen’s book in order to find an argument to engage. Would you have preferred to read a series of articles?
7. Now that you are not a part of my course, and thus I cannot implement any draconian procedures, what is one “evil” thing I could force upon next semester’s students to improve writing instruction?
8. How many hour a week did you spend on this class? Generally, did this class take more time than your other classes? Less?
9. If a friend asked “is Santos’ course hard?” how would you respond? If they queried “should I take it?”
10. Instead of using Google, should I have used Facebook? Would that have been too weird?

A quick note on question 9: my drop rate at USF is extraordinarily high. It is not an attendance problem--it is a retention problem. This semester I taught 2 25 person sections--both classes now have enrollments below 12. Students explained to me that my course isn't hard (in the sense of grading) but is hard (in the sense that it requires a lot of thought). It doesn't require a lot of thought because of the difficulty of material I assign; rather, it calls upon them to invent, every week, their own assignments. They are required to post 1000 words a week on their topic, but outside of a few occasions, I did not give them any guidelines for what their posts needed to do each week. At least, that's what a few students candidly told me a few weeks ago--so I'm hoping question 9 will help me to understand what I need to do to increase retention. But I will not spoon feed.

New Course in Rhetorical Theory [Real]

First, let me say that Rowan is doing fine. She's sort of rejecting the concept of sleep today (its 11:30 and still no nap--a very bad sign), but otherwise o.k.

In Marc news--official Marc C. Santos news--I've been asked to design an undergraduate course in Rhetorical Theory. I spend some time Googlin' around the net to see what I could find, and basically saw two approaches. The first relied heavily on either Bizzell or Hawhee; these courses offered a pretty broad/historic survey. The second approach was heavily (heavily) steeped in 20th century pomo--but often looked more like a literary/cultural studies theory course than a rhetorical theory course. I'm going to try to split the difference (which means I bound to fail) and go for something like this:

• Week One: Plato's "Gorgias," Republic VII (emphasis: the split between rhetoric and dialectic, rhetoric is too risky)
• Week Two: Aristotle's Rhetoric, Books I and II (emphasis on traditional appeals, relation to the audience, kairos)
• Week Three: Cicero selections from De Oratore (emphasis: defense of rhetoric, response to Plato) and De Inventione (stasis)
• Week Four: Lanham, "The Q Question," Nussbaum intro to Cultivating Humanity, Jarrett intro to Rereading the Sophists
• Week Five: Paper Week One
• Week Five: Kenneth Burke selections from Permanence and Change (piety, perspective by incongruity); Blakesley's Elements of Dramatism Chapter 1 (pentad)
• Week Six: Kenneth Burke Rhetoric of Motives 17-65 (identification); "Definition of Man" essay; Corder's "Argument as Emergence" (rhetoric as narratology, not persuasion)
• Week Seven: Rhetoric (returns to?) Composition: Bitzer "Rhetorical Situation," Ede and Lunsford "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked," something by either Toulmin or Lauer on invention (not sure yet--might do both).
• Week Nine: Paper Week 2
• Week Ten: Grassi, "Philosophy as Rhetoric"; Levinas "The Thinking of Being and the Question of the Other"; Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"
• Week Eleven: Derrida "At this very moment in this work here I am" (ethical relation between writer, audience, and knowledge) and Learning To Live Finally (pomo relation to audience)
• Week Twelve: Ulmer, selection from Heuretics or Internet Invention; Davis, "Preambulatory Emmissions from Breaking Up [at] Totality
• Week Thirteen: Rickert, "In the House of Doing: Rhetoric and the Kairos of Ambiance, "Edbauer "Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies," Hawk "Toward a Rhetoric of Network (Media) Culture: Notes on Polarities and Potentiality" (pomo complexification [sic] of r/c bedrock)
• Paper Week 3
• Week Fourteen: Rheingold selections from Smart Mobs, Porter, "The Chilling of Digital Information: Technical Communicators as Public Advocates"
• Week Fifteen: Projects
• Week Sixteen: Projects

I've taken the "paper weeks" from Rickert who took them from Frank who took them from ????: on a paper day, everyone in the class distributes a short paper and reads it to the class. I'm interested in this pedagogically in terms of delivery and kairos--two elements that are often a bit more muddled (Rickert might say) in traditional academic [for class] writing.

As far as the final project, I believe this will be on a per-student basis. I will allow traditional papers, disciplinary annotated bibliographies, wikipedia projects, multimedia projects (perhaps something out of Ulmer)--just about anything the students can offer.

I've still got to write up the course description, but I know I'll be leaning toward providing students with a thorough understanding of the history of rhetoric and of the principle rhetorical concepts and techniques. Such historic understanding should help them to understand the fundamental positions underlying the work they do as technical writers. Familiarity with traditional rhetorical concepts and conventions should help all facets of their writing process, from invention to revision. I'll have to clean this up and look at the other new course proposals in my department to get a sense of length/depth/sophistication. But I think I've got a legitimate course brewing here...

Any Chance its Like a Surgical Strike

As I type, I sit alone in an empty, rather clinical room located in the bowels of human resources at USF. I am here for new faculty orientation with the payroll department. I am eight minutes early... and again... the only person in the room. There are nice... um, hefty... packets arranged on tables. There are cups with different colored markers in them. There are seven white boards. I have an urge to run.

I hope this is like a surgical strike- quick and painless, but I don't think I shall be so lucky... [gasp] someone approaches!

Breaking Radio Silence

I am alive and in Florida. I've been away from my digital life for awhile now- ignoring my email and rss feeds in favor of the new house, state, and job. Red tape is fun. Seriously. But now I have a new I.D. card, computer account (still having trouble w/ my new email), and parking pass (more difficult than it sounds).

While adjusting to Florida in late July is something akin to adjusting to living on the surface of Mercury, I am warming up (har, har) to the new surroundings. The blueness of the sky, proximity of water, and intense sunshine remind me of the summers I spent on Cape Cod as a kid. Rowan enjoys are almost nightly swims in the community pool. I enjoyed the trip to the Banana Republic to buy new clothes for the new job.

So far everyone in the department is really nice and helpful- I have a great office with a window and a view of green things. Pleasant. I'll be teaching two sections of an upper division expository writing class in the Fall, rehashing the Constructing the University syllabus I ran with Rythaniel a few years back. I am tied down to using a textbook, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, but it doesn't look too painful and I think I can adjust. I've got the course website half done- I'll throw up a link later this week.

So, to all of you waiting to hear from my, I'll check my email sometime tomorrow. Hope all your summers are going well.

Time to Shop for Sun Block

Its unofficially official: I have accepted a position with the University of South Florida. The job focuses on teaching the history of rhetoric at the graduate level and will also involve undergraduate courses on contemporary rhetorical theory, visual rhetoric, professional writing, advanced composition, and (eventually) new media. Initially, I'm slated to teach the History of Rhetoric every year- but I'll be looking to create a Contemporary Rhetorical Theory course at the Ph.D level and offer them in alternating years. Sweet.

I was fortunate enough to have two tempting offers- my other offer focused on teaching new media at the undergraduate level. In the end, South Florida presented an intriguing opportunity to contribute to the development of both a graduate program in rhetoric and an undergraduate program in professional writing (which is currently under revision and is beginning very much to reflect what I've contributed to at Purdue). Also, South Florida reunites me with my original tech-mentor, Meredith: not only won't I be the sole Boiler, but also I won't be the only tech person.

After doing so many campus visits, I have only general thing to say: many English departments are going to wake up one day and realize its the 21st century. Our students, our citizens, are communicating in very different ways than they did even 25 years ago. If English instruction is to remain vibrant and meaningful, then it had better start adapting to the ways that citizens communicate everyday. The essay is "dead"- but many of its values appear in blogs. The research paper is dead, too- but wikis present a new way of thinking about and purposing knowledge. Let me say it this way: the research paper is dead, but the act of researching (the process) has never been more popular. While a number of schools I visited understood this, a number didn't. Go ask philosophy (or, before that, rhetoric) how a discipline fairs once it stops being meaningful to the general public. And the public's importance will increase even more in a digital age.

Enough ranting, perhaps I'll write about the job search a bit more in a few weeks, when I've been able to digest it a bit more. Thanks to everyone who helped and supported me through this grueling process. Now its time to go by some sun block (not for me, for Meg- have you ever seen an Irish person in the sun?)