Cultural Studies and Composition Pedagogies

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Cultural Studies and Composition Pedagogies
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Pop Culture Goes Academic

• Focus on popular culture (both dominant and
  subcultural)
• Analyzes a diversity of texts and practices
  advertising, music, film, TV, hypertext, poems,
  speeches, architecture, art, shopping,
  hairstyling, graffiti, drag shows

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CS Analytic Questions

• How do cultural texts and practices intervene in
  the construction of identities?
• In what ways do particular cultural texts and
  practices resist and/or reinforce social
  hierarchies (of class, race, gender, sexuality,
  ability)?
• How do people resist or revise dominant cultural
  texts, creating a multiplicity of readings?
• How can we design academic research and
  pedagogical methods that contribute to social
  change?
• How can textual analysis and ethnography be
  combined in the study of culture?

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Originary Myths / Evolving Histories

• Born at Birmingham Center for Contemporary
  Cultural Studies (1950s)
• Initial focus on class
• Turn towards broader analysis of difference

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Sounds fun, but what does all this have to do
with composition?

• Allows students to write and to read persuasive
  academic discourse about familiar, engaging
  topics.
• Like feminist and critical pedagogy, CS seeks to
  empower students to read their world critically
  and to act as agents of social change.
• A great, fun way to teach students about rhetoric
  (the construction of arguments/appeals, the
  social contexts and material effects of
  discourse)

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But, there are some caveats!

• Some students may not be familiar with popular
  culture texts.
• Students may resist critically analyzing texts in
  which they have strong personal investments.
• Cultural studies is so fun that we could forget
  to keep the focus on teaching writing.

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Sounds great, but I have a syllabus to write in
the next couple of days!

• Some practical suggestions for using cultural
  studies to teach personal, academic, and public
  discourses

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Unit One Personal Discourse Student Identity
and Cultural Studies.

• Objective To enable students to draw from and
  write about their personal experiences in
  relation to culture.

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1st Week ReadingObjective To expose
students to personal narratives set in particular
cultural context.

• Who are these writers writing for?
• What are the writers responding to? What are the
  issues?
• How do writers resist or affirm cultural
  representations of their social identities?

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Possible Selections

• 1) Paul Austers Why Write? Lars Eighners
  On Dumpster Diving
• 2) Judy Syfers Bradys Why I Want a
• Wife.Kurt Fernslers Why I Want a
  Husband.
• 3) Daphne Scholinskis The Last Time I Wore A
  Dress.

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2nd Week Analysis

• Objective encourage students to break down
  texts to see how writers use style, tone, the
  appeals, and assumptions to express and situate
  their personal narratives.

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3rd Week Writing

• Objective Embark on the invention process, get
  the students to start writing their personal
  narratives in response to a cultural event or
  text that shapes their world view.

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Cultural Studies in the Academy
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Teaching from a CS perspective

• The academy has its own culture and discourse
• Students must situate themselves within that
  discourse
• Teachers and students come to the academy from a
  variety of cultures and discourses

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Inventing the University
The student has to appropriate or be
appropriated by a specialized discourse.
Commonplaces control our composition textbooks
which not only insist on a set view of
expository writing, but a set view of public
life.
A writer does not write, but is himself written
by languages available to him.
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Education has failed

. . . Education has failed to involve students
in scholarly projects. . . that allow
students to act as though they were colleagues
in an academic enterprise. . . . They are
expected to admire and report on what we do,
rather than inside that discourse, where they
can do its work. . .
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I dont know what the teacher wants from us
What happens when cultures clash?
How do we negotiate The space between cultures?
. . . the teacher gives us these notes on John
Milton and then he asks us if we have any
questions and we cant have any questions because
we dont know what to ask and so we are quiet and
then he gets mad at us,
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Approaching a solution
Realize the differences in expectations with
which the teacher and student enter the academy.
Open a dialogue about the markers that define
each discourse. What are they? Why are they
important to us?
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Cultural Studies Unit IIIPublic Discourse á
la Jerry Springer
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Setting up the activity (aka convincing your
students that you do have a point you will get
there eventually)

• Unit III Writing to analyze evaluate
• Cultural studies public discourse ??
• Done in tandem with Paul Gamsons article, Why I
  Love Trash (WL, p463-477)

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Beautiful, beautiful BRAINSTORMING
Gamson article (L board) / Jerry Springer (R
board)

• Gamsons points
• Talk shows reflect the environment they are
  rooted in
• Shift lines between public and private, muddy
  waters of normality (what exactly is the public
  sphere?)
• Misson? To exploit need for visibility and voice.
  Draw lines between us and them

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And now, for connectionsBegin to discuss,
making notes connections on board.

• Gamson
• Talk shows reflect the environment they are
  rooted in
• Shift lines between public and private, muddy
  waters of normality (what exactly is the public
  sphere?)
• Misson? To exploit need for visibility and voice
• Draw lines between us them

• Springer
• Guests are freaks of nature
• Pits two groups against each other
• Violence
• Controversial topics
• Multiple audiences?
• People having private conversations in public

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The Finishing Touches

• Review the connections they made between Gamson
  and Jerry Springer. Talk about any you (or they)
  feel are especially important.
• CS sees students as culture producers. Ask
  students to freewrite a paragraph or two.

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Additional Resources

• Berlin, James. Poststructuralism, Cultural
  Studies, and the Composition Classroom
  Postmodern Theory in Practice. The Allyn Bacon
  Sourcebook for College Writing Teachers. Ed.
  James C. McDonald. Boston Allyn and Bacon, 1996.
  37-52. After briefly outlining postmodern and
  social-epistemic theories, Berlin uses one of his
  cultural studies classes as a backdrop to
  highlight what he feels are the salient markers
  of the genre and encourages instructors to teach
  writing as an inherently political act involving
  a complex set of cultural codes. He concludes
  that competent writers and readers are those who
  have learned to contest, resist, and/or negotiate
  these codes.
• Hirsch, E. D., Cultural Literacy. Writing
  Lives/Reading Communities. Eds. Kate Halasek, et.
  al. Boston Pearson Custom Publishing, 2000.
  267-273. In this essay, Hirsch posits that the
  solution to raising national literacy levels Is
  to educate our students within a very specific
  framework of cultural knowledge. A national
  standards organization would be formed to define
  What is contained in this framework. An excerpt
  from the appendix to Hirschs book directly
  follows this article in Writing Lives. These two
  texts would be extremely useful in starting a
  discussion on what aspects of culture are
  important enough to be part of a shared American
  vocabulary.
• McComiskey, Bruce. Social-Process Rhetorical
  Inquiry Cultural Studies Methodologies for
  Critical Writing about Advertisements. JAC 17.3
  (1997) 381-401. McComiskey explores both the
  theory and practice of teaching critical writing
  about advertisements in a cultural studies
  composition course. In analyzing advertisements,
  McComiskey focuses on three crucial issues
  cultural production (the creation of social
  values by and through advertising), contextual
  distribution (the notion that advertisements both
  construct and are constructed by the assumptions
  of the audiences at whom they are directed), and
  critical consumption (or the ways in which
  consumers critically read advertisements, at
  times resisting their cultural messages).
  Ultimately by having students engage these three
  crucial issues in their discussion of and
  critical writing about advertisements, McComiskey
  seeks to teach students strategies for
  rhetorically intervening in advertisings
  production of social values. This article could
  be useful to teachers of 110 because it provides
  a complex theoretical model for the analysis of
  the public discourse of advertisements as well as
  a helpful appendix which outlines potential
  assignments/lesson plans based on this model.
• McQuade, Donald and Christine McQuade. Teaching
  Seeing and Writing. Boston Bedford St. Martins,
  2000. This compendium of eight chapters consists
  of engaging and productive instructional
  resources. It provides a wealth of strategies and
  exercises that will enable you to extend your
  specific instructional purposes. Each chapter,
  covering large thematic discourse (gender, race,
  pop icons, body image, etc)breaks into various
  authors, titles, followed by a summary of the
  written work, and the four rubrics of generating
  class discussion and in-class writing additional
  writing topics connections with other texts and
  suggestions and further instructions. Because
  such a resource provides a lot of potential, it
  demands that the instructor discriminately tailor
  the activities to fit time constraints.