Trimbur, "Should Writing Be Studied?"

A carnival of a different sort. Thanks to Donna, Jeff, and Collin for getting the party started...

Quick Summary:
Trimbur suggests that a new “discipline-defining” debate is before us: what it means to move the field into a broader study of writing, into writing-as-inquiry. We see this shift with writing majors and upper-division course development. This means that writing is more than just teaching students HOW to do something. This also also mean pushing beyond first-year comp and the pedagogical imperative. The writing workshop and process models are “epistemological stances” that keep us wedded to “historical responsibilities” like teaching skills and serving other units. Thus it seems “scandalous” or “careerist” to change our field’s geography. But worthwhile to move to the “seminar room” with its epistemology and methodology of discussion and inquiry. We might better serve undergrads if writing became a broader “intellectual resource.”

Some Thoughts:
1. We’re *already* concerned with these broader issues, aren’t we? The field has made the spatial moves that Trimbur alludes to--moving to community sites, networks and new media, etc. Published scholarship isn’t at all limited to the classroom or the domain of first-year comp. BUT, and I think this is what Trimbur's getting at, what goes on in introductory comp. theory courses, oftentimes, has NOT made that shift. We sometimes (and I emphasize sometimes) do one thing in our scholarship but another in our “intro” grad classes, where articles from the past five years of jac, for example, rarely rear their heads.

Does that mean that these "other concerns" (projects that embody writing-as-inquiry) are tangential or marginalized or undervalued or (perceived to be) overly specialized? I'm not sure. But I do get the sense that the field considers the essays in 'Cross Talk in Comp Theory' or 'Writing Teacher's Sourcebook' to somehow be "the basics." (Maybe this is because many introductory courses are framed as pedagogy courses...and maybe that fact is a good illustration of Trimbur's point.)

This past year I've written about my great-grandfather's poetry and activism as sites of identity formation, as instances of using writing for particular kinds of (class-based) identifications. I've also been working on a piece that points to Detroit garage rock bands for a similar kind of class-conscious theorizing, but with a greater emphasis on intersectionality. The question "can writing be taught?" has nothing to do with these projects, and I don't feel any of the mythic "pedagogical imperative" pressure. Nor does the epistemology of the writing workshop affect the projects. At least I don't think so.

I don't say this as a critique of what Trimbur has to say, but rather to illustrate that I wish Trimbur's piece was more precise about what situation it responds to. What am I missing? I know, for example, that there is still *some* sentiment that suggests we should only be doing (classroom, or case study, or quasi-experimental) research on sentence combining and the like. Is such sentiment materially affecting members of the field when they go up for tenure? Like I said, what exactly does Trimbur see as the context for his argument?

2. A phrase and a notion that interests me very much is "[We can] organize the study of writing as an intellectual resource for undergraduates.” I like the way Trimbur doesn't dismiss pragmatism or even the notion of "service" but rather frames writing's contribution as one that is intellectual. I like what this suggests about broad constituents (not just fy comp students or those who supposedly can’t yet do what we want them to do) coming to writing for a broad array of reasons and uses. And here Trimbur is drawing on the introduction to Coming of Age, a text he cites and that seems to inform his analysisin significant ways. Community activists; those invested in writing as career; those interested in technology, culture, politics, media, and other areas of liberal studies, etc, etc.

3. Where exactly does the shift toward writing-as-inquiry leave first-year comp? I'm wondering, for instance, how we can foster both institutional awareness of writing-as-inquiry and a shift toward writing majors/upper-division course development/etc. without furthering reliance on contingent labor. (I know I'm treading close to waters where the inquiry possibilities become "scandals" and that I'm playing what potentially is a zero sum game, but here goes anyway.)

Here at UMD, we're working on these very initiatives while being mindful that they take "us" (the four tenured or tenure-track rhet/comp-ers) out of more sections of first-year comp. Develop and teach an upper-level writing class: great, but it means you'll teach one less section of comp. This affects our (already troubling) ratio of full-to-part time instructors in the comp classroom.

My point is just that the shift (sorry to be all monolithic there!) affects some very practical administrative matters at our institutions. And, more broadly, it makes us ask a question (a good questions, a questions that we SHOULD be asking) about where we ought to expand our energies. This site or this site? Appopriately, it's a question of our professional geography.