BE: Composing the Digital Self

ENGL106ur@ serves as one of several strands for the new one-semester, first-year composition course. The course brings together several different theoretical and pedagogical strands, combining interests in contemporary culture, personal investigation, rhetoric, and multimedia. The course asks students to locate or “map” themselves in relation to contemporary cultural domains or “nodes,” including (but not limited to) identity, networks, the arts, education, space, work, and information. Students will write in a variety of genres, from essays to webpages, and engage with various media, such as film, music, images, text, and webtext. Through their reading and writing, students are asked to explore the overall theme, You Are Here/ur@, in order to develop a sense of cultural location. By this we mean that students are asked to generate knowledge, with the concept of mapping serving as an organization heuristic and methodology, that is situated (perspectival, or keyed to the personal) yet civically and culturally relevant. The concept of mapping is less invested in common forms of critique, de-familiarization, or representation, and more concerned with strategies of cultural and rhetorical production. Additionally, the class will introduce and build upon established rhetorical concepts and techniques. With a unique combination of instruction in the traditional classroom and the computer classroom, plus one-on-one conferencing, this English 106 sequence helps students develop their rhetorical skills and cultural knowledge while discovering the complexities of writing, communicating, and composing in a networked world.

Theoretical Background
This approach to English 106 grows out of a variety of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, histories, and contexts. These include traditional humanities-based modes of inquiry, civic preparedness, rhetorical invention, and a concern for multimedia literacy.

Overall, however, the most important influence for ENGL106ur@ remains the various cultural studies pedagogies that were developed in the 1990s. Like many cultural studies pedagogies, ENGL106ur@ :

In designing ENGL106ur@ , we wanted a writing course that supplements the goals of service to the academic community and vocational preparation. By incorporating classic humanities issues, ENGL106ur@ asks students to engage in questions that develop their understanding of what it means to live in the world today while helping them become rhetorically and civically sophisticated. Moreover, this course reflects the numerous ways in which composing occurs in an increasingly visual and technological culture. In line with much recent scholarship in rhetoric and composition, we want students to develop as readers and writers in a wide variety of media and genres, and for differing audiences.

The concept of mapping in ENGL106ur@ provides teachers and students with a productive way to discover their complex relations to education, money, art, work, and technology and develop the rhetorical sophistication to navigate those relations. Mapping suggests a cultural studies approach that moves beyond critical hermeneutic practices. Instead, mapping is tied to a notion of rhetoric as a generative art that allows students to engage with culture on academic, civic, and personal levels, while developing a personal and responsible sense of location, or situatedness, that has larger socio-culture significance.

Adapted from Sequence Introductory Comments: Online, Dr. Thomas Rickert and Mr. Colin Charlton