Journal of Basic Writing
Volume 20 Issue 2, Fall 2001
Table of Contents
· Joseph Harris, “Beyond Community: From the Social to the Material”
· Mark Wiley, “Rehabilitating the ‘Idea of Community’”
· Mark Wiley, “Response to Joseph Harris’s 'Beyond Community'”
· Thomas Reynolds, “Training Basic Writing Teachers: Institutional Considerations”
· DonaldMcCrary, “Speaking in Tongues: Using Womanist Sermons as Intra-Cultural Rhetoric in the Writing Classroom”
· Anmarie Eves-Bowden, “What Basic Writers Think About Writing”
· Trudy Smoke, “What Is the Future of Basic Writing?”
Journal of Basic Writing
Abstracts, Volume 20 Issue 2,
Fall 2001
Joseph
Harris
“Beyond Community:
From the Social to the Material”
This revised version of a talk given at the 2001 meeting of
the CUNY Association of Writing Supervisors continues a line of thinking in A
Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966 (Prentice, 1997), which offered a
critique of current use of metaphors of community in teaching writing as both
utopian and confining. This essay suggests alternate ways of imagining writing
and teaching as taking place in more open, contested, and heteroglot spaces,
proposing three counter-concepts to community: public, material, and
circulation.
Mark Wiley
“Rehabilitating the
‘Idea of Community’”
Learning communities have become increasingly popular ways
for working with students, especially first-year students, yet there has been little
discussion of these structures in the composition literature.Given that the
root metaphor of conflict informs many first-year writing pedagogies and in
light of Joseph Harris’s critique of “community” as a key word, talk of
learning communities may invoke fears of a return to conservative tenets of
expressivism.Community-like elements, however, are regularly noted by other
scholars as informing practices in many writing classes.The apparent success of
learning communities and the continued use of community in our classrooms
should therefore cause the field to re-consider how we define “community.”Such
re-considerations should not only respond to Harris’s insightful criticism but
also build on research and theory that suggest why learning communities can be
effective vehicles for curricular and institutional change.
Thomas
Reynolds
“Training Basic
Writing Teachers:Institutional Considerations”
The training of basic writing teachers, discussed in the past as an effort built on improved knowledge of linguistic, cognitive and other kinds of factors related to basic writers, has received less attention recently.With recent work emphasizing ways that basic writing gains definition in local contexts, training is here discussed principally as an institutional effort.Teachers might improve instruction, as well as institutional standing, of basic writing on local campuses by conceiving of training as occurring within and influencing institutional structures.
Donald
McCrary
“Speaking in Tongues:
Using Womanist Sermons as Intra-Cultural Rhetoric in the Writing Classroom”
This article explores how womanist sermons—produced by womanist theologians who create new texts and analyze existing texts using a womanist hermeneutics that locates and resists multiple oppressions—can be used in the writing classroom with other-literate students to help them produce hybrid discourse that problematizes and expands what is acceptable and progressive rhetoric within the academy. Representing student discussions of womanist sermons and analyzing students’ “secular sermons,” the article demonstrates how exploring womanist sermons can help non-traditional students create provocative and analytical essays that utilize a much fuller range of their linguistic capabilities.
Anmarie
Eves-Bowden
“What Basic Writers
Think About Writing”
This article explores basic writing students’ current writing processes, their thoughts on their writing, and their introduction to a structured writing process model.Findings are based on a semester-long study and include observations of and interviews with basic writing students at Sierra College of Rocklin, California.Ultimately, the article suggests that educators can assist basic writers in becoming successful college writers by introducing them to a structured writing process model while also helping them to become reflective about their own writing processes.
Trudy
Smoke
“What Is the Future
of Basic Writing?”
A valedictory piece, this is one co-editor’s opportunity to reflect on more than a half decade of editing JBW.