Canned Goods

“Sadly, I’m writing today about the passing of Teresa Kynell-Hunt, one of my mentors from Northern Michigan University. Three words which I’ll use to describe her — brilliant, classy, tough. I can’t say enough about how much I respected and looked up to her.

I received the news on Christmas, but there aren’t any details available at the moment.

She was much more than the following but here is a recent professional bio from Baywood Publishing:

Teresa Kynell Hunt is Interim Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at Northern Michigan University. She holds a Ph.D. in rhetoric/technical communication from Michigan Technological University. Past chair of the NCTE Committee on Technical and Scientific Communication and Executive Committee member of the ATTW, she has authored a variety of articles, including the Nell Ann Pickett Award-winning “Technical Communication from 1850-1950: Where Have We Been?” She is the author of Writing in a Milieu of Utility; coeditor (with Michael Moran) of Three Keys to the Past: The History of Technical Communication; coeditor (with Gerald Savage) of Power and Legitimacy in Technical Communication, Vols. I and II; and coauthor (with Wendy Stone) of Scenarios for Technical Communication: Critical Thinking and Writing. Kynell Hunt is a member of the Peer Review Corps of the Higher Learning Commission and consults externally on assessment and accreditation.

One of the reasons I like getting away from home during the holidays is leaving behind the distractions that are a part of that space: computer (internet; games …); tv/dvds; chores (those blasted dishes and other cleaning).

I usually bring a book or two–this year it’s Michael Snow’s almost Cover to Cover and Henry Jenkin’s Convergence Culture (recently discussed on the WPA-list; Jenkins and Gee have been on there recently, which makes me feel as though I working in the right area at the right moment . . . so I better get to work).

It’s nice to sit down in a comfy leather chair (”oh, what i could do in my office with this chair,” I think. [intellectually, folks!]) with a hot cup of coffee and spend some quiet time reading and considering.

The slow life is something that has always attracted me, and its value becomes clearer when away from email and work which, ironically, always seem to help me to be more productive and creative and clearer in my thinking. I think of this spatially, almost as a firewall, blocking out what might seem to be attacking the senses, the processors, and disabling the ability to function as desired.

In about 12 hours we’ll be on the road to Kalamazoo for Christmas, but there’s one gift left to get: a case of Moose Drool. It’s dark, rainy, and I’m already in my pajamas, but my brother-in-law, who goes fishing near Missoula, MT (and Big Sky Brewery) every year, desires a bit of the ‘drool. So I better gear up and head over to the best place to buy beer in Madison–the Jenifer St. Market.

Sure, I celebrated that winter had arrived during the first week of December, and since then all the snow has melted.
Sure, it hasn’t snowed since then.
Sure, it’s going to be 40 on Christmas, a brown Christmas.
Sure, anyone try to train for the cross-country ski season are out of luck.
Sure, no kids will be sledding.
Sure, no one can ice-skate.

Fine, I jinxed Winter.

But at least home heating costs are down by more than 25%.

I’m working away at my Computers and Writing proposal, finally. I’ve been thinking about for much longer, but stuff always seems to get in the way, and the immediate always calls the loudest. Now the proposal is screaming. I don’t know how it will turn out. Scot will tell me if I’ve cocked up.

So to get me in that working groove I chosen some of my favorite groove tunes–Supergrass:In it For the Money.

I’m feeling really guilty for not having kept my blogroll up to date this semester. With my use of Thunderbird’s feed reader, I go thru this process of subscribing to a feed in Firefox and then copying that feed info into Thunderbird. This has greatly increased the efficiency of my blog reading and commenting, but it’s also started me thinking about the purpose of the blogroll. For me, it does more than show what interests I have or what community I might be a part of. The blogroll also serves as documentation, like a Works Cited page. Those people and their work/blogging who shape my thinking should get the credit (of course, they might not want this credit).

So, I’m planning to take the time to update my blogroll over the break–even if you’d rather I not.

The e-copy of our annual holiday greeting card.

I didn’t think it was possible until I was riding down the hill from Capital Square that you could get an ice cream headache without ice cream. It’s cold today.

I’m working on my question for the preliminary exam portfolio. I’ve received some really good constructive feedback from one particular faculty member (in two parts) on this that has helped/forced me to think about why the heck I’m writing this essay in the first place. It needs to be more than a lit review (what the first comments focused on), although the nature of prelim exams in general and our old system of prelims seemed to be coming to an understanding of the field in a lit-review-ish way. Since the new prelims format is still new, I guess I was thinking more in terms of showing what I know and beginning to move a dissertation topic.

So, here’s the question that prompted the initial feedback:

Working from the four competing aims/concerns of Composition as outlined by Smit in The End of Composition Studies and Berlin’s taxonomy of rhetorics used in writing instruction–
(1) writing as a body of knowledge and a fairly narrow set of skills people use to communicate with one another (objective rhetorics, CTR);
(2) writing as a form of personal liberation (subjective rhetorics);
(3) writing as part of a larger set of social or cultural practices (transactional rhetorics);
(4) writing as a way of participating in a civic culture, local, national, or even world culture (transactional rhetorics),
–how do new literacy & new media studies and participatory culture address these aims and rhetorics? What gaps in the field of composition and rhetoric might they address? And, what gaps lie between NLS, NMS, and participatory culture?

In response I added:

I guess, right now, I’m at the point where I would say that the teaching of new media literacies in the writing classroom requires, or in the least should include, aspects of multi-modal literacies and media literacy and, more importantly, share New Literacies’ sociocultural approach in that it should be seen as teaching what Henry Jenkins’ identifies as “core social skills” for a participatory culture. This thinking initially arose from thinking about what I wanted my students in 201 to get from learning to use blogs and other multimedia software and the discomfort I felt as I began to draft my syllabus. Many of the assignments tended to focus on individual creative expression and less on these literacies as social practices.

And the question I received was “who are you in debate with on this? That is, who do you see disagreeing or being unsatisfied with the claim . . . ?”

Now I can see that if I step back from my claim to a position that asks who would not see the value of teaching new media literacies, I might then move into what can/should be taught in this type of writing course.

But if my question becomes geared towards a debate of regarding the use new media, at this second (having just received the feedback and not having giving sat down to think about quite yet–beyond this blog) I don’t have a clear answer.

[Add: After meeting with one of the faculty, this question seemed focused enough and more than simply a lit review. It still is in rough form, but I don’t need a final draft until mid-January, and I’m sure it will change as I work over the break: In what ways do new media literacies and participatory culture fulfill/add to the aims of the field of Composition? Or not?]

As part of our preliminary examinations portfolio we have to write a teaching philosophy (it’s also a part this semester’s professional seminar for the teaching of English 201). Any attempt to define yourself is pretty intimidating.

It reminds my of the times I prepare to answer questions like “what’s composition and rhetoric?” or “what’s pedagogy?” to K’s family during the holidays; I usually find myself stumbling to get something coherent out and leaving unsure as to whether I should simply say “I’m studying writing” or “the teaching effective written communication.” I can sit down with my students and ask them to tell me what their paper is about in one sentence, but I’m hard pressed to do the same regarding my work.

Maybe you can comment with your one-liners?

Well, back to the TP (teaching philosophy, in this case). I remember writing one for a couple of grad school apps, and I’ll hunt it down, knowing it will most likely be embarrassing after 3 years of sitting on my hard drive. So as I pass on a link with some guidance regarding this genre of writing, I’ll thank Tim for sending it out on our seminar listserv.