Bib #5

Computers and Composition 91-94

Computer-Based Writing Tools and the Cognitive Needs of Novice Writers

Robert B. Kozma
Computers and Composition 8(2), April 1991, pages 31-45

“Novice writers, given their cognitive needs, are likely to benefit from features that go beyond those in standard word-processing programs, features that correspond more directly to cognitive components of the composing process. Software designed with functions that model or that prompt the developing cognitive skills of novice writers maybe more likely to scaffold their writing processes and improve their written compositions. Novices may benefit most from software that assists in the formulation of rhetorical goals and strategies, aids the recall and organization of topical knowledge, assists in the translation of goals and knowledge into text, and prompts the revision of plans as well as text.”

Ambiguity and Confusion in Word-Processing Research

Joel Nydahl

Computers and Composition 8(3), August 1991, pages 21-37

The discipline may have “jumped the gun” on the benefits of word processing in the classroom. A closer examination both qualitative and quantitative is needed.

Computerized Invention for Composing: An Update and Review
Wallis May Andersen
Computers and Composition 9(1), November 1991, pages 25-38

An update on computer software for invention with a consideration for hypertext.

Selecting Computer Software for Writing Instruction: Some Considerations

William Condon
9(1), November 1992, pages 53-56

“I can say that several factors make choosing software today just as difficult as in the days when selecting software for Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) simply meant choosing which drill-and-practice set to inflict on hapless students (or choosing, even better, not to inflict any of them on students).”

“Ease of use--transparency, in computer terminology--means that teachers can devote less time to teaching computer skills and more time to teaching writing, and it means that students spend less time being frustrated by the technology and more time exploring its capabilities and benefits. In general, if students cannot master the basics of an application upon first using it and become familiar with most of its functions within a week, then it is probably too difficult to use in a writing class. Exceptions to this rule should occur only when the program delivers especially valuable, unique capabilities.”

Behaviors, attitudes, and outcomes: A study of word processing and writing quality among experienced word-processing students
Mike Markel
Computers and Composition Vol. 11 No. 1 1994 pp. 49-58

This article reports on the relationships among computer experience, attitudes, writing behaviors, and writing quality for advanced undergraduate students who have owned Macintosh computers for at least 3 years. Students who routinely use the Macintosh use it aggressively, have positive attitudes about using it, and believe that it improves their writing. Attitudes toward writing with the Macintosh correlate with students' outcomes on two controlled writing tasks: one using the Macintosh and one using traditional writing methods. Students who like the Macintosh tend to do well on in-class writing assignments using either method; those who do not tend to do poorly using either method. These findings suggest that writing attitudes and practices are fairly well ingrained for the less competent writers, and that they need to become comfortable with the computer to experience the improved attitudes that the computer users report. If less competent writers have a more positive experience toward writing, they are likely to write more, and this, in itself, might be the most direct path to improved quality.

Macintosh versus IBM in composition instruction: Does a significant difference exist?
Tony Dierckins
Computers and Composition Vol. 11 No. 2 1994 pp. 151-164

This article reports the results of a study replicating Halio's (1990) study in which she criticized Macintosh's graphical user interface as having a negative affect on writers. The present study examines writing of students using Macintoshes in comparison to those using IBM-compatibles in writing argumentative and research papers. Analysis indicates that differences are not large enough to justify claims that the use of graphical user interface (GUI) affects writing skills of users. Further, the author suggests that rapid changes in technology may make measurements of the microcomputer's influence on student writing outdated as it is reported and the issue moot.

Word processing and the ongoing difficulty of writing
Carolyn Dowling
Computers and Composition Vol. 11 No. 3 1994 pp. 227-235

Although the benefits of word processing are widely acknowledged, writing is nevertheless still perceived as an activity fraught with difficulty. It is becoming increasingly apparent that significant differences exist between traditional forms of writing and the experience of creating text on a screen. Some of these differences relate to physical characteristics of the computer, though others appear more subtly consequent upon what might be termed the “psychological” dimension of the relationship among computer, user, and text. It is interesting to consider the degree to which particular features of word processing as a medium might constitute new and significant impediments to individual writers. This issue is explored in relation to discussions held with a number of writers who had expressed concern that their expectations regarding the benefits of word processing were not being fulfilled.

JAC 91-94

Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing by Jay David Bolter
Reviewed by Douglas Hesse
Book Review
JAC Issue 12.2  1992

Word Perfect: Literacy in the Computer Age by Myron C. Tuman
Reviewed by Joel Nydahl
Book Review
JAC 13.2  1993

Control and the Cyborg: Writing and Being Written in Hypertext
Johndan Johnson-Eilola
JAC 13.2  1993

Finding Voice through Computer Communication: A New Venue for Collaboration
by Marion H. Fey
JAC 14.1 1994

More about distance writing with computers and opening up lines of communication while encouraging unique writing voices.

The Metaphor of Collage: Beyond Computer Composition
by Russel Wiebe and Robert S. Dornsife, Jr.
JAC 15.1 1995

College English 92-94

The Case for Hyper-Gradesheets: A Modest Proposal
Patricia Harkin, James Sosnoski
College English pp. 22-30 Vol. 54 No. 1 1992
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/377556

Reviews: 

Computers and English: What Do We Make of Each Other? 
Reviewed: Computers and Community  by Carolyn Handa; Computers and Writing: Theory, Research, Practice  by Deborah H. Holdstein; Cynthia L. Selfe; Mindweave  by Robin Mason; Anthony Kaye
Review by: Charles Moran
College English pp. 193-198 Vol. 54 No. 2 1992

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/377584

From Book to Screen: Four Recent Studies
Reviewed: Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing  by Jay David Bolter; Disappearing through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century  by O. B. Hardison, Jr.; The Death of Literature  by Alvin Kernan; Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video  by Gregory Ulmer
Review by: Richard A. Lanham
College English Vol. 54 pp. 199-206 Vol. 54 No. 2 1992

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/377585

Computer Perspectives: Mapping New Territories
Reviewed: Hypermedia and Literary Studies  by Paul Delany; George P. Landow; Critical Perspectives on Computers and Composition Instruction  by Gail E. Hawisher; Cynthia L. Selfe; Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies: Questions for the 1990s  by Gail E. Hawisher; Cynthia L. Selfe
Review by: Helen J. Schwartz
College English Vol. 54 pp. 207-212 Vol. 54 No. 2 1992

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/377586

IBM, Talking Heads, and Our Classrooms
Frank T. Boyle
College English Vol. 55 No. 6 1993 pp. 618-626

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/378698             

                                         

Electronic Mail and the Writing Instructor 
Gail E. Hawisher, Charles Moran
College English Vol. 55 No. 6 1993 pp. 627-643

Hawisher and Moran call for a closer examination of e-mail as a composition tool and reveal the gap within the discipline.  Hawisher and Moran cite the commentary on email prevalent in other disciplines as well as our own discipline’s historical reception of computers as the impetus for their article.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/378699

Written Communication 92-94

Cynthia Greenleaf

Technological Indeterminacy: The Role of Classroom Writing Practices and Pedagogy in Shaping Student Use of the Computer
Written Communication January 1994 11: 85-130

This study proceeds from the assumption that computers do not function as independent variables in classrooms, but rather as part of a complex network of social and pedagogical interactions. It examines the integration of computers into the writing practices of a remedial English class in an urban high school. Computers and word processors were introduced midway into the school year. The class was observed and recorded daily throughout the academic year, and all written work was collected. Six students were selected for in-depth focus as they carried out writing tasks. Analysis focuses on how classroom writing practices were structured and carried out and how students participated in writing tasks before and after the computers arrived. Although many changes accompanied the use of computers, the study concludes that the teacher's structuring of writing instruction had the greatest impact on both student writing and the ways computers entered into that writing.

College Composition and Communication 92-94

(NOTE: Vol. 43 No. 2 : Another review of Bolter’s text)

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The Shape of Text to Come: The Texture of Print on Screens
Stephen A. Bernhardt
College Composition and Communication , Vol. 44, No. 2 (May, 1993), pp. 151-175

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/358836

Bernhardt calls attention to how text is changing and how it is viewed. Bernhardt suggests there is an “inappropriate” way in which the history of text on paper can be applied to the “new” (electronic) medium.  The article cites work already done on representative text by scholars in the field (notably Bolter).

REVIEW:

Theorizing Technology While Courting Credibility: Emerging Rhetorics in CAI Scholarship

Reviewed: The Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing  by Jay David Bolter; The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts  by Richard A. Lanham; Writing Teachers Writing Software: Creating Our Place in the Electronic Age  by Paul LeBlanc; Literacy Online: The Promise (And Peril) of Reading and Writing with Computers  by Myron C. Tuman
Review by: Joseph Janangelo
College Composition and Communication Vol. 45 No. 4 1994 pp. 535-547

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/358764

The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones 
Cynthia L. Selfe, Richard J. Selfe, Jr.
College Composition and Communication Vol. 45 No. 4 1994 pp. 480-504

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/358761

An early discussion of the computer interface as a space to negotiate around political borderlands – where students are not marginalized or oppressed based on race, class, gender, etc.  However, Selfe and Selfe note that these devices which we, for the past decade, have thought to erase political and ideological boundaries, are still defining and propagating them. The authors cite the example of minority classrooms using computers for basic “skill and drill” instruction while majority classrooms use computers for “higher order” creative and cognitive literacy skills.

TCQ 92-94

Using desktop publishing in an editing class—the lessons learned and students' assessments
Marty Tharp & Don Zimmerman
Technical Communication Quarterly pp. 77-92 Vol. 1 No. 2 1992

This article—based on personal observations, a survey, and modified Nominal Group Techniques—reports students' perceptions of learning desktop publishing systems (DTP). Students learned the foundations of DTP in less than 60 hours of hands‐on experience; the incremental introduction of DTP functions and practice sessions before the assignments were more effective than alternative teaching strategies tried; and the use of DTP encouraged non‐artistic students to use artwork to enhance their publications.

Hypertext and collaboration: Observations on Edward Barrett's philosophy
Chet Hedden
Technical Communication Quarterly pp. 27-41 Vol. 1 No. 4 1992

In a departure from the view that characterizes hypertext as a new writing paradigm based on old associationist ideas, Edward Barrett has proposed a model for hypertext that rejects cognitive and associationist language as both unnecessary and inaccurate. In this view, knowledge, reality, and even facts are community generated, “linguistic entities,” and hypertext supports the “social interface” rather than the “deep structure” of thought. This essay considers some of the premises of Barrett's proposal. A central issue is the rejection of the “authorial imperative” of structured information in favor of a view of writing as an open‐ended ever‐changing conversation in which readers and writers collaborate to discover—or generate—reality.

Network collaboration with UNIX

Dennis Horn

Technical Communication Quarterly pp. 413-429 Vol. 2 Issue 4. 1993

Recent advances in computer technology make networking an essential skill for the technical communicator. Particularly, the development of local, national, and international computer networks has created a collaborative writing environment. At the heart of the Internet network is the UNIX operating system. The open architecture of UNIX makes it a superior tool for collaborative writing, in the classroom, across the campus, or internationally. Central to the open system is UNIX's mode of allowing users to set file access permissions, restricting some files while allowing others to be open to the public.

Beyond skill building: Challenges facing technical communication teachers in the computer age
Stuart A. Selber
Technical Communication Quarterly pp. 365-390 Vol. 3. Issue 4 1994

By examining computer‐related courses and faculty rationales for offering such courses, this article broadly examines how and why we commonly use computers in technical communication classrooms, and in what ways our current instruction may or may not move beyond skill building to include literacy and humanistic issues. It then broadly outlines three pedagogical challenges that lie ahead as we use computer technologies to support our teaching efforts over this decade and during the next century.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Stanley Fish!

In many ways this week's reading by Stanley Fish complicates my previous blog post about distinguishing between form/author/content - the "trifecta" that I so eagerly wish to preserve given my limited time in the field of literary critique.  While I most certainly welcome many of the assertions that Fish makes about the nature of interpretation and its importance to "what we do" with the written word, I can't help but call into question the ultimately value of the position.  Now, I will make a disclaimer and say that I am not a fan of my last sentence - it gives me that uneasy feeling of "preservation" as if I believe that forms and author intentions are something worth saving - in my scholarly "heart of hearts" I can say that I do not.

I will begin by recalling an example I gave in my previous blog post about the novel Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. Essentially, I claimed that because the "form" of the text - that it is written entire in second person - is distinct from the content purely because after almost a decade, I can recall the form when I can barely given an account of the content/story.  Of course one can (and will) contend that the form of the text is no different than the content as they are all the choice of the author - in Fish's terms, one might say they are all a function of the author's assumptions about his reader and thus his bend to interpretive communities (or one in particular).

Yes, Tom Robbins chose to write his book in the second person because there was an assumption that his readership would understand the move (that it is "different" and "unique") and thus the book ended up in an undergraduate literature course in which students were asked to "interpret" the use of the narrative form - why might this form be effective? What would the author want, if anything, TO affect? How might the form change the way the reader receives the text and (assuming that authors write for anyone else but themselves) why does it matter and to whom?  And there were all were, members of an interpretive community that understood narration (or now did after the book-as-vehicle for membership into this interpretive community).

And this is what interests me most about Fish's "interpretive communities" - that my earlier privileging of memory insofar as the form of the book is what made it memorable is even more important now when I think of it this way: the form of the book not only made the text itself linger, but it also either A) called forth an already-existing knowledge which proved membership of an interpretive community or B) created membership in an interpretive community - one that could only assist a budding literary scholar in their later endeavors. 

And that's all well and good but for the question of the form itself which I think, still, deserves a closer look.  I say this purely to push the boundary of the difference between interpretive communities which already exist (as in the case of Robbins - the second person narrative form existed as well as a readership/interpretive community to receive it) and the moment that an interpretive community is created.  I wish to draw a distinction between the two and suggest that the moment a form is given a name - and thus becomes a form as we know it - functions differently (perhaps in the ripple-effect of interpretation it causes) than one that is appropriated.  

I would like to believe that even though "...interpretive communities are not natural or universal, but learned" (457) that there is a timeline in which certain forms can be traced and the closer that we might get to that moment of inception (as impossible or laborious the task would/may be), that the notion of interpretive community may, in fact, change.  Or perhaps that's only due to how we choose to interpret it...

Mind=blown.

Bib #3

College English 88-90

Composing Behaviors of One- and Multi-Draft Writers
Muriel Harris
College English, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Feb., 1989), pp. 174-191

Note: This is a stretch, but there is ONE paragraph in this article that takes issue with the original notion that students who made more corrections on a word processors were doing a better job with revision – but this author challenges the assumption that more corrections automatically means better revision processes (this is echoed in another article from this time period that I will identify later!)

Writing as Collaboration
James A. Reither and Douglas Vipond
College English, Vol. 51, No. 8 (Dec., 1989), pp. 855-867

Note: the article deals with writing/peer-review as a social/collaborative exercise and only mentions the use of a word-processor once in the entire article (mentioning that it is/has been used for collaborative purposes).  This again echoes earlier work done to determine the social nature of computers in the classroom and their affordances for peer editing workshops (as students are more likely to be honest with each other as well as the network simply fosters a greater social bond between students).

Computer Conferences and Learning: Authority, Resistance, and Internally Persuasive Discourse

Marilyn M. Cooper, Cynthia L. Selfe

College English Vol. 52 No. 8 Dec. 1990 (pp. 847-869)

Cooper and Selfe detail their use of the computer lab (outside of the classroom) as a way for students to express their thoughts about the readings in a manner that they might not if they were asked to share in person in class.  Selfe and Cooper determine that students do, in fact, take advantage of the distance of their discourse.  Their students are seen as “resisting” a traditional discourse and creating new “subjectivities” through the use of computer conferencing.  AND THE MOMENT OF TRUTH: “The biggest challenge teachers face today in connection with computers is not that of using technology-we are already doing so-but rather that of using tech-nology to make a real difference in our classrooms.”  Self and Cooper seem to be the first (before I look at Computers and Composition) to suggest that we should not “sit back” and just let students compose on word processors, but we should be innovative with the technology! Self and Cooper also suggest multiple directions with the use of computers, not just conferencing.

Reading Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New Medium

John M. Slatin
College English Vol. 52 No. 8 Dec 1990 (pp. 870-883)

As Slatin states “Both word processing and desktop pub-lishing have as their goal the production of conventional printed documents, whereas hypertext exists and can exist only online, only in the computer. A new medium involves both a new practice and a new rhetoric, a new body of theory.”  Slatin points to the completely new medium of hypertext as beneficial due to its refashioning of conventional textual organization.  Interested, too, is Slatin’s assertion that hypertext challenges the relationship between reader and author like nothing before it.

Teaching Word Processors to Be CAI Programs

Joel Nydahl

College English Vol. 52 No. 8 Dec 1990 (pp. 904-915)  

This article pits CAI software against what the author calls the “CAI potential” of word processors themselves. This is the moment of truth where English teachers finally come to the realization that the (simple) word processing capability of PCs holds just as much (if not more) potential than the software programs long thought to be the end-all be-all of composition instruction with computers.   Nydahl suggests that when students are encouraged to use the “latent capacities” of word processors in place of CAI, it fosters a better learning experience for the student as they are required to use more problem-solving skills within their composition/use of the word processor.  Nydahl does well to indicate the limitations of CAI software whereas the past several years of scholarship have been devoted to listing and exploring the affordances of CAI software.

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JAC Volume 9: 1989/1990?

Advanced Composition and the Computerized Library
Christine Hult
JAC Vol. 9

Hult indicates that libraries are changing their methods for research by abandoning card catalogs for computers and suggests that we must teach our advanced students how to conduct research with computers.  Hult describes four “computerized access tools” and provides suggestions on how to teach students in “advanced writing courses” how to use them.  The four tools she describes are online catalogs, computerized reference, online database searching, and compact discs and ROM (read only memory).  Ultimately, Hult points out that “the most important thing to remember is that information searching using computers is here to stay” (Hult).

Electrifying Classical Rhetoric: Ancient Media, Modern Technology, and Contemporary Composition

Kathleen E. Welch
JAC Vol 10.1

“we can look to electric rhetoric as one way to make the humanities something more substantial than the gentrifying of generations of upwardly mobile or already-arrived students who pass through the assembly lines of ' 'English" and other disciplines and roll off the line better prepared to buy…”

“Literacy became an even more powerful constructor of ways of thinking when movable print type made the writing and reading of the written word even more pervasive. The third stage is secondary orality. Largely electronic, this stage began with the invention of the telegraph in the 1840s and gathered more power as motion pictures, video, computers, and other forms became dominant communication modes.”  23

Fluency, Fluidity, and Word Processing

Carolyn Boiarsky
JAC Vol. 11.1

Boiarsky’s concerns focus on what she refers to as the “fluidity” of a student’s writing.  This “fluidity” refers to a student’s potential inability to make connections between their ideas during the pre-drafting and drafting phases of the writing process.  Boiarsky seeks to examine the relationship between this existing issue within student composing processes and the effect that word processing has on it.  Boiarsky concludes that if teachers are aware and able to teach their own skills with word processing composition to their students, the students will be better prepared to avoid these issues.

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CCC

Windows on Composing: Teaching Revision on Word Processors

Marcia S. Curtis
College Composition and Communication Vol. 39 No. 3 1988 (pp. 337-344)  

This interchange is important as it highlights a shift in thought/concern about word processors and the difference between “editing” and “revision” in the writing process.  The introduction to the debate indicates that word processors were thought (at the time) to be caught in a “backlash” with early scholarship indicating their benefit and current scholarship seeking to problematize their use.  Even more telling of this period in composition journals is Curtis’s call for instructors to trust their own pedagogical approaches and to experiment with word processors themselves rather than rely on the “available literature.”

Desktop Publishing: A Powerful Tool for Advanced Composition Courses

Patricia Sullivan

College Composition and Communication Vol. 39 No. 3 1988 (pp. 344-347)  

Sullivan provides an introduction to the capabilities of “desktop publishing” for advanced composition students.  Sullivan suggests that desktop publishing should not be used for freshmen composition because those courses already have a “loaded agenda.”

Principles of Generic Word Processing for Students with Independent Access to Computers

Ronald A. Sudol

College Composition and Communication Vol. 41 No. 3 1990(pp. 335-341)

Sudol suggests that we should be mining the resource of students who have access to their own home computers by not enrolling them in classes that use on-campus computers. Sudol’s reasoning for this is that the resources will be available for those students who do not have outside access. Sudol notes that the “physical proximity of computers does not by itself create a community of writers.”  This particular article is important to the progression of computers in composition courses as it marks a distinct move to suggest that the networking capabilities of computer use in composition (and the community that it fosters) do not necessarily have to occur in the same space.

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Computers and Composition V. 5 No. 2 April 88

The Computer and the Inexperienced Writer
Christine A. Hult
Computers and Composition Vol. 5 No. 2 April 1988

It’s ok to teach writing with word processors and to use them in composition classrooms, but Hult advises that students should come to the word processor with knowledge about the writing and revising process instead of learning it along with the word processor.  There is also the suggestion that we should not expect that word processors will help students become better with the revision process.

Research Update: Writing and Word Processing
Gail Hawisher
Computers and Composition Vol. 5 No. 2 April 1988

Revised empirical study of various studies gauging the effect of word processing on the writing/revision process of students.  Hawisher concludes, with even more data, that students do have fewer errors and lengthier compositions when using word processing. Hawisher is also able to conclude that basic writing students write better with word processing.

Risk Taking, Revising, and Word Processing
Delores K Schriner
Computers and Composition Vol. 5 No. 3 August 1988

Schriner contributes yet another empirical study on revision and word processing. “The results of this study confirm what other studies have shown: the word processor creates a favorable environment for writing, stimulating greater enthusiasm for the writing task among basic writers. The student writers in this study were also clearly more inclined to take risks while revising, experimenting with revisions at higher levels of the texts than those students composing with traditional tools.”

Word Processing: A Helpful Tool for Basic Writers

Craig Etchison
Computers and Composition Vol. 6 No. 2 April 89

Etchsion contributes to the empirical data on basic writers and the composing process with word processors. Etchison concludes that, while it is difficult to make sweeping generalizations when working with a small sample group, the results of his study seem to suggest that basic writers do well (and produce more text) with word processing.

A Process of Composing with Computers

Timothy Weiss

Computers and Composition Vol. 6 No. 2 April 89

Further enforcing a trend that “in order for students to gain the maximum benefits from the computer as an education and as a composition tool, they should use the computer throughout the composing process, and that teachers of writing should design computer exercises and activities that encourage this use among students.”

Developing Connections: Computers and Literacy
Ellen Barton and Ruth Ray
Computers and Composition Vol. 6 No. 3 August 1989

“We argue here against this fractured view of literacy and propose that students and faculty must take responsibility for developing a more integrated view of literacy in the university. We also suggest ways in which learning about computers could play a significant role in learning about literacy.”

How Word Processing is Changing our Teaching: New Technologies, New Approaches, New Challenges

Dawn Rodrigues and Raymond Rodrigues

Computers and Composition Vol. 7 No. 1 Nov. 89

Rodrigues and Rodrigues explore the ways in which teachers who use word processing and computers in their classrooms are altering their writing instruction.  The conclusion is that teachers are going beyond the typical writing classroom by instructing students to think differently about the writing process through the use of word processors for composing.

Overcoming Resistance: Computers in the Writing Classroom

Laura Brady
Computers and Composition Vol. 7 No. 2

Brady provides yet another article about resistance and potential for word processing.  This particular study focuses on first-year composition students and determines that the best case scenario is when all students are familiar with CAI, but maintains that even a classroom with a portion of proficient students can foster camaraderie in learning.

The Face of Collaboration in the Networked Writing Classroom

Geoffrey Sirc & Tom Reynolds

Computers and Composition Vol. 7 Special Issue 1990

Sirc and Reynolds explore the use of LAN networking in the classroom and determine that students are more receptive to critique when collaborating on the network.  This essay marks the first moment in composition journals where the conversation shifts to LAN networks in the classroom.

Distant Writers, Distant Critics, and Close Readings:
Linking Composition Classes Through A Peer-Critiquing Network

Michael Steven Marx

Computers and Composition Vol. 8 No. 1 Nov. 1990

“The use of a distance network to exchange drafts and critique letters between composition classes at different colleges creates a distance between student critics and student authors which, ironically, brings students closer together in analyzing and discussing written texts. Because of the increased understanding students have gained about the demands of effective written communication, a distance peer-critiquing network also brings students closer to their own writing.”

Ding Dong the Author's Dead

For years I've been trying to determine why I don't care about authorship or copyright. Perhaps it's because I've never really stood to make a substantial amount of money from a publication, or perhaps it's because I'm rather nonchalant about the sharing of information and ideas.  After this week's readings, I think, for me, it comes down to an interest in what happens *after* the ideas/information are released - the discursive possibilities, as Foucault would have it. 

My earliest thoughts of this nature were in undergraduate literature classes where I began to notice (through class discussions and paper assignments) that our consideration of the text had little to do with the author's intentions and more to do about our interpretations of the author.  Save for one or two instructors who insisted that certain canonical figures had a very specific meaning by what they wrote, much of the concern was about interpretations and implications.  My current attitude toward authors most certainly differs depending on the type of work I'm reading. I approach authorship in literature much differently than I do in theoretical/philosophical work and another level of difference exists for authors of empirical research (again, much aligned with Foucault).

Thinking about this in terms of the possible functions that a subject can have in a discourse (assuming that is what the text becomes post-production) - for empirical research, the subject remains for me simply as an example.  To clarify, when I read an empirical study about classroom praxis (which I have been doing a lot of lately), I see the author of the study as an exemplar of what to do (or in some cases, what not to do) in my future work.  The author-subject is present insofar as he/she has made a dent in a body of scholarship with a study design that cannot be disputed in its structure/creation no matter how the results are interpreted/utilized in future work.  I suppose the subject of theoretical and literary work could be regarded in precisely the same way - or many ways - but my first thought immediately goes to the work of authors like Tom Robbins, particularly his book "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" written entirely in second person.  I'm certain if I went to Google, I would find books written in second person prior to his, but it still remains striking in its form (not just its content) and for that reason it has made a "structural dent."  The story itself I can barely recall - but I'll never forget that book in terms of its structure, and because of that I'll never forget the author.  The same thing happened when I read the novel First Light by Charles Baxter* - the story is vague, but the form (and therefore the subject in this case) remains.

Ultimately, I agree with Barthes assertion that "to give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text" (279).  However, Barthes notes that giving a text an Author will "close the writing," but what do we do with formal/structural elements? While one can interpret Baxter and Robbins's stories however they choose, to what degree can they completely interpret form/structure? And to what end? We can weigh in on effectiveness and quality, sure, but form remains as we have given that a name far beyond the author-subject.  The same goes for the the empirical researcher - we can read her data and ruminate on the implications, but can we challenge/dispute the form of the study (beyond value judgments: good, bad, irresponsible, negligent, solid, etc)? And if so, what would we gain from it?

* The novel is written backwards.