A-posting we will go, a-posting we will go, hie ho the derry-o, a-posting we will go.
I was inspired for today’s title by Jessica’s use of the Captain Planet theme song a few days ago on her blog. Hers was far more clever; as is often the case, my own work is just a pale imitation of that of my colleagues.
Just a few thoughts:
Text Book includes an excerpt from Barhes’ A Lover’s Discourse. As an assignment, I was thinking of doing a project called "A ______’s Discourse." The idea behind the assignment would be for students to assemble a collection of quotations/excerpts/images/audio/video whatever that they think defines them. The goal would be to do some serious critical thought about this collection, and, at the end of the paper, to try to fill in the blank–that is, to examine the hypertextual connections of their subject positions to see how they might define themselves through those connections.
Pros of the assignment: First, it’s actually–omigod!–driven by some vague notion of theory rather than just generic convention. (If I had to say what theories I thought I was tapping into, I would venture that [obviously] new media logic is in there, as well as an assumption about identity being constituated through discourse, which I associate with Judith Butler. Maybe there’s a vague nod to hypertext theory, but I know there really is a "hypertext theory" and I don’t know jack about it.) Second, I like the possibility of making this a multimedia project: there is perhaps a way to use this starting point to lead to presentations in class. Third, it sounds like fun, and if it sounds like something I’d be interested in writing, it might be something I’d be interested in reading. (BTW, a call-out to Jeff: can you point me in the direction of any research about the role of pleasure in pedagogy? Not from the student’s side, from the instructors. That is, how does our pleasure influence what we teach? I guess, giving it a moment’s thought, Wayne Booth in some ways tries to answer that very question in the first reading we had way back when. . . )
Cons: A fear that students might just assemble a bunch of quotes they already know rather than do research. A possible way around that might be to add a mystory twist to it: ask students first to define themselves three/four ways, research those chora, and use the "_____’s Discourse" assignment to see how they interact? But then, how is that not a mystory? A mystory by any other name. . .? I’d like to use the mystory’s functions as the basis for an assignment, but I’m not sure if I want to use the mystory itself. I thought this might be a way around it, but after more thought–y’know it’s pretty much just a flippin’ mystory.
A twist on my earlier box-logic assignments as well:
Rather than just have another student, or even three look at each student’s items, why not arrange them throughout the room and have student’s move from box to box making notes, and then write the essay. Y’know what I think is sort of cool about this assignment: They’re essentially web-surfing but in person. If we think of web pages as being sort of Sircian "exhibits" or even Benjaminian "arcades", then the web is a larger space that is a collection of collections, a compendium of compendiums–ooh! [girlish squeal of delight]–a database of databases. Which might play into my interest in reading/writing hypertextually even more fully–not for nothing do we view the web in a "browser," right? [I leave aside the subtle commerical/capitalist implications of the word.] So. . .I guess this assignment is also based on New Media logic. The question, though, is how to make the textbook work for me to lead into the assignment. . .One idea. The book’s website has an entire e-text available for perusal. You know I’m using that fo’ sho. So, maybe a first assignment in that unit might be blogging about such sites as boingboing, and then using those as an inspiration for the "exhibit" assignment? That way, there’s a digital aspect too. . .Feedback appreciated as always.
Lastly. . .Thoughts about circulation. As we all know, I’ve sort of pooed on group work earlier in the semester, but now I’m rethinking that. Because of my interest in hypertextual reading/writing, I’m starting to see that group work is very important–not just in peer review but in the sense of expanding the circulation of student work. If hypertextual r/w foregrounds the connections between cultural production and consumption, then group work is almost mandatory in one way or another–whether it be through peer review, performance, collaboration, et cetera. Since circulation informs cultural product at both the moments of production and consumption, one way to make this a very real and literal part of my classroom pedagogy would be to emphasize a collaborative, communal mode of production and writing.
Thoughts welcome, as always.
