Notes on the Seminar
Professor Sondra Perl
Sondra.perl@gmail.com
Class blog: feltsense.ws.gc.cuny.edu
Three Large Areas of Inquiry/Disciplines/Frames
I. Composition Studies aka Comp/Rhet
The grounding discipline for this seminar which can be divided into many sub-fields:
Classical Rhetoric….Current-Traditional Rhetoric….History of Rhetoric…. Expressivism….Constructivism….the Process Movement….Social-Epistemic….Critical Pedagogy….Eco-Composition….Post-Process….Qualitative and Ethnographic Studies….WAC/WID….Assessment….Literacy Studies….
See, for example, Rebecca Moore Howard’s extensive bibliographies at
https://www.rebeccamoorehoward.com/bibliographies (although sadly now somewhat out-of-date)
For work in new media, see Arola & Ball’s annotated bibliography under course readings
And always asks, “What does this mean for teaching? How might I use this in my classroom? What is the connection between theory and practice?”
Compositionists working in and around new media:
Cynthia Selfe, Gail Hawisher, Greg Ulmer, Adam Banks, Collin Brooke, Todd Taylor, Anne Wysocki, Alex Reid, Doug Eyman, Cheryl Ball, Kathy Yancey, Kristin Arola, Jeff Rice, Byron Hawk, Carl Stolley, Jody Shipka….and growing
Online journals: Enculturation, Kairos, Computers and Composition Online, JITP (at the GC), The Basic Writing E-Journal (at CCNY), CCC Online Archive,
See also: https://ccdigitalpress.org
The New Work of Composing
Stories that Speak to Us
II. New Media
Digital Tools….Digital Composing….Space Studies ….Hypertext…. Cyberspace….Surveillance….Humans…..Posthumans….Digital Humanities….Multimodal Composing….The Study of Attention/The Study of Distraction….Distant Reading….Machine Reading….Big Data….21st Century Literacies
Which calls us to ask: “How does our understanding of writing change in this new environment? How does our understanding of reading change? How does our understanding of self and identity change?” We use these tools to compose but to what degree do they compose us?
See, for example, N. Katherine Hayles, Sherry Turkle, Matt Gold, Lawrence Lessig, Lev Manovich, Cathy Davidson, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Jentery Sayers…
III. Experiential Phenomenology/Experiential Psychology
Felt Sense….Embodied Knowing….Focusing….Theory of the Implicit….Thinking at the Edge….How Meaning is Made….Body/Mind/Knowing….Pausing….
Which asks, “Where is the body in all of this?” “How are these ideas experienced physically, in a bodily way, with consciousness and awareness?” leading to theories of knowing, of being human, grounded in experiential process
See Eugene Gendlin, https://www.focusing.org
Max van Manen, www.phenomenologyonline.com , www.maxvanmanen.com
Perl, Lavender, Gendlin, van Manen in course readings