In the fall of 2003 the Writing Program accepted a grant from the Vice Chancellor’s Fund for Diversity to integrate diversity into WRT 105 and WRT 205. It made sense for us to take up this challenge, because to write well is to write rhetorically – that is, to understand your own position as a particular writer, to recognize the limits of what you know, to do further research (from a quick Google search to a major trip through the library databases), to experiment with genres and media, and to attend to the different audiences you wish to reach.
That means diversity is already central to good writing and to the teaching of writing.
Our question has been, How do you teach students to become rhetorically flexible, to cultivate their awareness of the diverse perspectives and histories of the audiences they encounter, to move beyond cultural commonplace, to develop skills with different genres and media, and to put forth their ideas in passionate conversation with the ideas of others?
Over the course of the grant we have explored diversity –
- as a topic of inquiry (globalization, African American rhetoric, critical sexuality studies, labor and gender, hypervisibility, class and race in the US, geographies of exclusion, for example)
- as classroom interactions and dynamics (such as, what happens when things get heated in a class discussion or things shut down?)
- as awareness of rhetorical context (learning to use all the library and online resources to historicize and globalize one’s knowledge)
- as composing (especially invention, arrangement, genre, media, review and revision).
This fall we will share many of the amazing assignments teachers in the Writing Program have designed, taught, and evaluated. Check into the website every week or so to see what has been posted.
August 28, 2006
Documentary Resources compiled by Roger Hallas
Documentary Resources compiled by Roger Hallas
Posted by gr at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)